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Suburbi-non

In the right hands, the deceptively shiny veneer of 1950s American life could easily serve as the perfect backdrop for a biting satire, allowing a filmmaker to deftly reveal the darker layers hidden beneath the decade's sitcom-infused pleasantries and plastered smiles. And that's exactly what director George Clooney appears to be going for with "Suburbicon." But sadly, he doesn't seem to have the right hands. Darkly farcical in violent fits yet rarely very cohesive as a whole, the movie fails to find a unified voice, offering occasional bursts of twisted black comedy in between an otherwise dull crime caper and an oddly detached racial subplot.

After suffering a home invasion in the outwardly pristine community of Suburbicon, Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon, "The Martian") and his family try to recover. But when secrets about the incident are gradually revealed, new dangers threaten to disrupt their lives. At the same time, an African American family, the Mayers, struggle to deal with increasing racist hostility in the area. As the once peaceful suburb is overrun with unsavory twists and turns, chaos looms in the neighborhood.

Originally written by the Coen Brothers decades ago but never filmed until now, the script has since been revised by Clooney and writer Grant Heslov ("Good Night, and Good Luck"). But even divorced from their questionable additions, it's pretty apparent why the Coens neglected the screenplay for so long in the first place. It's just not very interesting. Though the film starts off promisingly enough with a playfully sardonic promotional reel for the serene town of Suburbicon, things soon settle into a rather listless funk as the film's central crime comes and goes without much impact or momentum. Sure, the requisite character quirks, bumbling setbacks, and increasingly dark revelations found in similar Coen Brothers films are all present to some degree as Gardner desperately attempts to navigate the aftermath of the attack. But unlike the duo's better work, they all feel oddly muted and inconsistent here.

All the while, the subplot involving the Lodge's new African American neighbors continues to build, yet the two storylines never really gel narratively or tonally, making their connection feel strangely forced. While the subplot (apparently Clooney and Heslov's main addition to the original script) is clearly included in order to expand the film's social commentary, it's never developed enough to stand on its own. If executed a little differently, this thread may have actually led to a darkly ironic comparison between the two families, but the Lodge side of the equation is too madcap and the Mayers side far too serious for the juxtaposition to work.

Thankfully, Gardner's own increasingly perilous predicament does perk things up a tad in the frantically bloody third act, with a few bits of absurd black comedy and some potent flashes of style here and there that help to liven Clooney's otherwise bland aesthetic. A shadowy strangulation scene and a tense POV sequence under a bed offer some particularly solid camera work, appropriately evoking a certain retro Hitchcockian feel. Oscar Isaac also steals the show as an insurance investigator who stirs up the pot, but the faintly cartoonish nightmare that follows is too little too late.

"Suburbicon" ultimately uses its noir influenced plot to paint a portrait of outlandish ugliness poorly spliced with some rather real horrors - a portrait fittingly grotesque at times yet far too blotchy and uneven to leave much of an impression. Perhaps the Coen Brothers could have injected the script with a more unique and consistent sensibility if they had stepped behind the camera themselves. As it stands, however, Clooney can't quite find an engaging style or rhythm of his own. There's a potentially interesting film in here somewhere, but without a few more drafts, this is one dusty script that should probably have stayed on the shelf.