"This is my friend Harry. He's married. He likes his wife. It can happen." So Pierce Brosnan opens this smartly done, noirish thriller set in late Forties America.

Dir: Ira Sachs
With: Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson

"THIS is my friend Harry. He's married. He likes his wife. It can happen." So Pierce Brosnan opens this smartly done, noirish thriller set in late Forties America.

Harry (Chris Cooper) wants to leave his wife (Patricia Clarkson) for a young blonde widow but doesn't want any hurt feelings. Enter Pierce Brosnan (mercifully speaking, rather than singing, his lines, as in Mamma Mia!), with advice that crazy-in-love Harry ignores in favour of his own highly dubious plan. With a trusting wife on one side, a doting mistress on the other, and a best friend slicker than an oil spill, something has to give as company man Harry starts to feel the strain.

Writer-director Ira Sachs has constructed what amounts to a theme park of Forties America, complete with big skirts, big cars and big hats, every setting painted with rich colours. Although calling to mind the films of the era, his world doesn't quite ring true. The cast of old school pros, while never less than enthralling, are a little too mannered at times, as if this were an episode of Masterpiece Theatre rather than full-blooded melodrama.

The story could have done with more fine tuning to make the twists and turns harder to see coming, but the slickness of the performances make the whole deal easy on the eye and ear.

This is one of those pictures stuffed with superb performers, like Cooper and Clarkson, that deserve the limelight but are too often sidelined into supporting roles.

Finally they get to have a ball, and so will anyone else in search of grown-up, retro fun.

Glasgow Film Theatre, tomorrow- August 16, Filmhouse, Edinburgh, August 15-21