Entertainment

WHEN LAW RAISES CAINE

‘I understand you’re

f – – – ing my wife,” goes one of the many curare-tipped dialogue darts in “Sleuth,” a mystery remake in which Michael Caine and Jude Law shoot Harold Pinter’s lines at each other.

The film’s adapted by Pinter from Anthony Shaffer’s stage play that in turn inspired the 1972 movie in which Caine played the younger man and Laurence Olivier his senior rival.

What’s it all about, Sleuthie? It’s about pure masculine hostility. For the first of this movie’s three acts, Pinter’s inimitable barbs fly swift and true, especially when Caine is the one firing them: “Are you all right in elevators?” “I thought Maggie said you were a hairdresser.” “You’re sure your father isn’t Hungarian?”

Law’s Milo goes to visit Caine’s Andrew, a wealthy mystery writer who lives in a country manse bristling with sharp angles and bitter technology. Each detail is spotlighted under riveting direction by Kenneth Branagh: When Andrew offers Milo a drink, he requests scotch. Andrew goes to get it, and we see that it’s already been poured.

The piece depends on twists that reek of the techniques perfected, and then abused, in musty British stage mysteries, which is why the set of the 1972 movie looked like the tea parlor of a pair of spinster sisters named Honoria and Agnes.

In the remake, the first twist, though it doesn’t make much sense, carries a pleasing little clash of retro and modern not unlike walking into London’s Tate Modern, a red-brick former power plant turned chic contemporary museum. The plump, cozy Victorian structure of “Sleuth” is redefined by Pinter’s elliptical, weapons-grade nastiness.

As the play goes on, the plot grows increasingly absurd, particularly in its last third when the characters no longer seem to be themselves. That would be forgivable if Pinter kept up the pace he establishes early, but almost all of his many withering lines – “Are you sensitive to pain?” “The shortest way to a man’s heart is humiliation” – are in the first half.

Just when things should be getting exciting and complex, they become repetitive and predictable. Subtext becomes hint becomes statement becomes declaration. For once, Pinter is a little too easy to understand.

Running time: 86 minutes. Rated R (profanity). At the Lincoln Plaza, the Sunshine, the Chelsea.