Parents' Guide to The Virtuoso

Taking a cue from its characters' wardrobe, this neo-noir is the black turtleneck of thrillers: It's self-important and pretentious, and it doesn't hide the flaws it thinks it does. Silk-throated Mount narrates his inner thoughts, but, unlike a '40s gumshoe thinking through the case to viewers, he speaks (to himself? to us?) in second person. Are we supposed to be a cool-headed assassin in this scenario? It serves no purpose other than to sound cool and edgy, and no doubt director Nick Stagliano and writer James C. Wolf thought the device was terribly clever. Terrible, yes. Clever, no. In fact, it may spark memories of a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

The film's other elements also prove that there's a fine line between brilliant and ridiculous. The characters are nameless, identified as The Mentor, The Waitress, The Loner, etc. The violence is intentionally gratuitous, and it's easy to picture the filmmakers giddily thinking up how the kills would go down, perhaps even seeing themselves as "virtuosos" as well. And the sex scenes are rather blunt. While it must've been fun to create a noir story set in the modern age, it's all so preposterous that the end result feels like parody rather than an homage.