Sleuth

Aroview: Sleek Harold Pinter-written remake of 1972 character-driven thriller ratchets up the menace, pitting cuckolded crime writer Michael Caine against his wife's younger lover Jude Law in a deadly game of wits set inside the walls of a high-tech country mansion.

Despite the initial excitement of rapid-fire repartee, Pinter's ping-pong dialogue quickly deflates into charmless contrivance; his self-indulgence stretching to an awkwardly overt rendering of the original's faint homoerotic subtext, while Branagh's camera goes all ga-ga over gadgetry, doing little to serve the suspense. Strictly for fans of the famous four, then; others are advised to watch the original instead.