This is not a who-dun-it. It’s a will-they-be-able-to-prove-it. As in the old Columbo television series, we know from the beginning who pulled the trigger. We see Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins) shoot his wife in the head because she was having an affair. We see the police come for him. And we see hotshot prosecutor Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) get what looks like a slam-dunk case: the police have the gun and a confession.

Then Ted and Willy face off against each other. Ted likes to create intricate, meticulously designed machines with all kinds of rolling balls and shifting gears. His fondness for complicated puzzles is an indication that it isn’t going to be a slam-dunk case after all. At least not for the prosecution.

This is one of those films that really boils down to what goes on between the two men. There’s a distracting and predictable backstory about whether Willy will sell out and go to work for the big corporate law firm with the pretty senior associate yadda yadda. But all that matters is the cat and mouse game between Ted and Willy, especially because it is not clear who is the cat and who is the mouse. And because Ted and Willy are played by actors who know how to work it. Gosling’s Oakie accent gets a bit wearing, and even Hopkins’ accent seems to waver at times, but the script gives them some juicy twists and relish-worthy lines and when the two of them get going, you can feel the air between them crackle.

Parents should know that this film has brief but intense violence with a man shooting his wife at point-blank range and an off-camera suicide. The issue of “pulling the plug” on someone with no brain activity is raised. Characters use some strong and ugly language. There are sexual references, including adultery and a non-explicit sexual situation.

Families who see this movie should talk about what was important to Willie and how his priorities — or his understanding of his priorities — changed. What will he do next?

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy the classic Witness For the Prosecution and more contemporary courtroom thrillers like Primal Fear and Presumed Innocent. They might also appreciate the television series Columbo.

Was Ashley Judd at the hairdresser the day this script came in? She’s usually the star of movies like this — the low-level potboiler with the plucky girl in jeopardy, and Morgan Freeman around somewhere to give some sage advice. But in the Ashley Judd role this time we have Oscar-winner Halle Berry, whose post-Oscar choices have included the notorious duds Catwoman and Gothika. Please, fire your agent, Ms. Berry. Whoever told you to make this movie should be…sentenced to have to watch it.

Berry plays Rowena, an investigative journalist who gotcha’s a Mark Foley-style conservative Senator with some incriminating photos. But the story gets spiked when he pulls some strings, and she quits her job.

When a childhood friend is murdered, Rowena decides to go undercover to investigate. The friend had been having an affair with Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), a big-time CEO she met online. He’s the kind of guy who when he kicks someone out for sharing secrets with the competition he really KICKS the guy out. She gets a job as a temp working in Mr. Big’s office and starts snooping around. And she starts chatting with him online, too. Pretty soon they’re typing back and forth about her underwear.

Her skeezy sidekick in all of this is Miles (Giovani Ribisi), a guy who is very big with getting around firewalls and seems a little too into Ro. There’s also an ex-boyfriend who is back in the picture but who was once involved with the murdered girl. Hill has a jealous wife. If Rowena isn’t careful, she could end up like her friend.

And if Halle Berry isn’t careful, she can end up having to give back her Oscar. This movie is all sensation, no sense or sensibility. The jump-out-at-you scares are all in the trailer, the backstory is cliched and obvious, and the big bad reveal at the end is laughably over the top. Strange, yes. Perfect — about as far as you can go in the other direction, which is where audiences should head when this movie hits the theaters.

Parents should know that this movie is filled with truly nasty stuff, including explicit and sometimes twisted sexual references and situations. There are references to adultery, promiscuity, sexual harassment at the workplace, online sex, gay sex involving someone in the closet, obsessive fixation, and child molestation. Characters use strong language (mostly the f-word) and drink (including references to celebrating by getting drunk). There is a scuffle and characters are injured and killed.

Families who see this movie should talk about why people are drawn to anonymous online relationships.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy better thrillers like Charade and The Silence of the Lambs and a better film by this director, Confidence.

In this tense and twisty thriller, our narrator and central figure is Chris (the stunning Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a one-time high school hockey star and dreamboat who was brain-damaged in a car crash on prom night. Now, he works as the night janitor in a bank and goes to life skills classes to practice “sequencing” and tone down the “disinhibition” that allows him to make inappropriate comments to his pretty caseworker. At night, while he is at work, a friendly cop comes by to bring him donuts and sometimes he plays janitor hockey with his mop and thinks about how much he wants to be “who I was.” The hardest part of sequencing is finding a way to move his own story forward.

“I wake up,” he says. “I shower. With soap.” But is that before shaving or after? And “I cry sometimes” — is that supposed to be there? Chris has a little notebook for writing everything down to make sure he gets the sequences right.

But the sequences don’t seem to be right. He has the patient guidance of Lewis (Jeff Daniels), the blind roommate he met at the life skills center. And he has the confused affection of his wealthy family. They have kept his old room the way he left it, filled with trophies and the wheelchair from rehab folded up in the corner. His father still expects him to play chess. They seem to have more trouble than he does sequencing him into his future.

And then Chris meets Gary (Matthew Goode), who remembers him the way he was and doesn’t seem to think he’s changed much. Gary introduces him to Luvlee (Isla Fisher of The Wedding Crashers) and she seems to think he’s pretty great the way he is. They show him a heady glimpse of himself as powerful, wanted, friended by people who see no reason to feel sorry for him.

And capable of…something adventurous and dashing? Gary wants to rob a bank. The one where Chris and Barney Fife have donuts every night. Has Chris missed a step in his sequence and gotten himself into a situation he can’t sequence himself out of?

The genre of the “impaired narrator” provides instant interest for audiences, who must try to guess what is going on based on limited information from the character who is telling it. Of course, writers always dole out information in a highly controlled way. But this personification of narrative control creates a puzzle that immediately makes our involvement more intense and alert.

Gordon-Levitt is the real deal, a fascinating performer who creates the pre-crash Chris so compellingly in a few brief moments that we can miss him — and glimpse him under the slightly scrambled version he becomes. We’ve seen too many showboat-y performances by actors who love to play the look-at-me-act-with-one-hand-behind-my-back award-bait disabled roles. But Gordon-Levitt and Daniels give us characters who happen to have some disabilities, fascinating for who they are, not for what they can and cannot do. And Goode is…great. In the past relegated to playing the cute English guy with the cute English accent in movies like Match Point and Chasing Liberty, here he is as silky and menacing as a cougar. First-time director Scott Frank makes the most of his own tightly-written script, never neglecting character for action. He makes our hearts pound, but he also makes us care.

Parents should know that this movie has very mature material, including explicit and graphic peril and violence, with many characters injured or killed. Characters use very strong language, drink, smoke, and use drugs. Many of the characters are criminals who threaten, bully, cheat, and steal. There are sexual references and situations, including nudity. A strength of the movie is the portrayal of disabled characters who are capable and dedicated.

Families who see this movie should talk about “sequencing,” and why it is important for the characters and in storytelling. How does the structure of this movie help to make that point?

Audiences who enjoy this film will also enjoy Memento. They will also enjoy other outstanding tense thrillers like A Simple Plan, Shallow Grave, and Out of Sight, with a superb screenplay by this film’s writer-director.