Review: The otherwise flat mystery ‘A Kind of Murder’ gets points for showcasing ‘60s style

Anyone jonesing for an eyeful of “Mad Men�-era production design will find plenty to savor in “A Kind of Murder,� the first English-language screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Blunderer.� The movie’s murder-mystery heart never truly gets pumping, though; the psychological games prove far less tantalizing than the filmmaker’s evocation of a wintry 1960 Northeast. (As in another feature based on a Highsmith novel, “Carol,� Cincinnati plays New York.)

Patrick Wilson stars as architect and part-time fiction writer Walter Stackhouse, who lives in stylish misery with his emotionally unstable wife, Clara (Jessica Biel). His obsession with the unsolved murder of a Newark woman leads him to visit her book-dealer husband (Eddie Marsan), who Walter is certain committed the crime — as is the detective on the case (Vincent Kartheiser, snarling to no avail).

Walter’s fixation is clearly fueled by his own savage thoughts toward Clara, not to mention his guilt over a growing attraction to a Greenwich Village blond (Haley Bennett) whose sleek, black getups are a pointed contrast to Clara’s forbidding crinolines and princess pastels.

In the film’s strongest performance, Marsan embodies class resentment and bottled-up rage in every glance. But under the direction of Andy Goddard (“Set Fire to the Stars�), working from Susan Boyd’s streamlined screenplay, none of this is gripping. The story remains an academic argument, struggling to pierce the handsome surface.

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‘A Kind of Murder’

Rating: R, for language and some violence

Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica

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