Buyer beware: 'House of Sand and Fog' poorly built

The premise of this exacting but disappointing thriller produces a series of mounting confrontations that ends in catastrophe. Kathy is thrown out, and Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley), a retired colonel in the Iranian army, buys the house at auction and moves in with his wife, Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), his skateboarding teenage son Esmail (Jonathan Ahdout), and a deadly store of hubris.

The Behranis quickly transform Kathy's run-down house into a gleaming home. And despite Kathy's simmering determination to reclaim it, the colonel won't budge. This is the state's fault, not his. More important, he's plunked his life's savings into the place and hopes to later resell it at a substantial profit. His wife finds him foolish and selfish, of course, but he curses and slaps her, winning her compliance with his rage.

Meanwhile, Kathy hires a lawyer (Frances Fisher), resumes drinking, and embarks on an affair with Lester Burdon (Ron Eldard), a sheriff who was present during her eviction. Lester soon discovers some frontier of himself that makes him willing to leave his wife for Kathy and try to help her regain her house.

Emotionally, he and Kathy are rarely in the same room at the same time; he gets stronger as she falls apart. By the time they end up in the Behranis' house -- he's armed, she's drunk and suicidal -- things are out of control.

For all its histrionics, however, the movie never earns your sorrow. In the final tragic minutes, you have to settle for watching these people's devastation slip between your fingers, which I'm sure is not what the sand in the picture's title is meant to evoke.

The film is based on an imperfect but gripping novel by Andre Dubus III. First-time director Vadim Perelman adapted the book with Shawn Lawrence Otto, and their movie shares its premise and mechanics -- Kathy's dazed refusal to open her mail leads to tragedy -- with the novel. Dubus understood the thinness of the story's catalyst, but he was able to carry the reader away with luscious phrasing, something for which Perelman fails to find a visual or narrative equivalent.

There are, however, numerous shots of clouds and, yes, rumbling fog. But the film fixes a detached and rational glance on exceedingly irrational behavior.

Hopelessly devoted to the source material, Perelman seems intimidated by the force of the prose, holding onto the thin curves of narrative while leaving the character details to his three lead actors.

Only Kingsley is up to the task. The colonel is a rigid, foolish, and unyielding man. An immigrant, he believes in America and pushes his faith in that dream to its breaking point. Kingsley is stiff with fury and hot with purpose. He doesn't care that you don't like this man; he wants us only to try to understand where the colonel's coming from, which we do.

Still, you want to get further inside these people's heads than the movie and the actors allow you to, Connelly and Eldard in particular.

In a particularly inhospitable performance, Connelly barely lets us in the character's front door. On the page, Kathy, by her own estimation, is a failure, but her self-knowledge is often crystalline, even when her state of mind is not. She is vital, excited, depressed, and infuriated. Connelly just sleepwalks through her interpretation. And Eldard drains every ounce of sexiness from Les, choosing to shout all his lines, as if trying to wake Connelly from her stupor.

The overwhelming performance is Aghdashloo's, who's feral and absolutely feeling. In a movie about falling apart, she's the one actor who dares to come off her hinges.

House of Sand and Fog

Directed by: Vadim Perelman

Screenplay by: Perelman and Shawn Lawrence Otto, based on the novel by Andre Dubus III

Starring: Ben Kingsley, Jennifer Connelly, Ron Eldard, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Jonathan Ahdout, Frances Fisher.

At: Boston Common, Embassy Cinema, Harvard Square, suburbs

Running time: 126 minutes

Rated: R (violence, disturbing images, language, sexuality)

**1/2

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.