'Nobel' is no prize winner

Bryan Greenberg (left) and Shawn Hatosy as his kidnapper in the crime thriller.

Not flagrant enough to be vile, not original enough to be any good, "Nobel Son" does offer a rare opportunity to see Alan Rickman at his worst. It also allows you to admire the astonishingly ageless Mary Steenburgen's ongoing transformation from mouse to fox.

It makes you a little nostalgic for the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well. That's when discombobulated crime thrillers were in vogue. They're not fashionable anymore - if you've seen one over-narrated, over-directed, over-plotted, yet baffling caper with a lot of good actors doing bad things, you've seen them all. Guy Ritchie made a name for himself with scuzz, but even his shtick has exceeded its sell-by date. "Nobel Son" goes further, crossing the contortions of "The Usual Suspects" with the shallowness of certain intellectual family melodramas.

Rickman expectorates and exaggerates as a pompous Los Angeles university physics professor who wins the Nobel Prize. Before his cannibalism-obsessed, PhD-candidate son (Bryan Greenberg) can board the plane to Stockholm, a stranger (Shawn Hatosy, always interesting) kidnaps him, asks for a million-dollar ransom, then overnights dad and mom (Steenburgen) a severed thumb. "Why?" you might ask. But really, why ask why?

Director Randall Miller and co-writer Jody Savin bloat the opening minutes with a checklist of cliches. The frame freezes while characters' names appear typed across the screen. There's pretentious narration (Greenberg quotes Montaigne and - dissertation alert! - speaks of the "Manichean imagination"); then he addresses the camera, whose swinging and spinning is accompanied by whooshing usually reserved for airborne cartoon characters. Oh, there's a dead body that the movie feels compelled to rewind three weeks to explain.

"Nobel Son" has one of those casts that suggest the filmmakers either knew somebody or knew somebody who knew somebody. Bill Pullman has accepted another prematurely crusty role - this time the presiding detective, who's sweet on Steenburgen's forensics lawyer. Eliza Dushku shows up as a crazy, vegetarian, spoken-word-spewing sex-sicle. (Yes, spoken word.) And what are Danny DeVito, Ted Danson, and Ernie Hudson doing here? Honestly? Not much.

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston .com/ae/movienation.