Adrien Brody is a noir natural, it turns out; his reedy voice and weaselly face are well suited to the role of Porter Wren, a tabloid crime columnist who taps into his inner private dick when approached by a beautiful blonde named Caroline Crowley (Yvonne Strahovski) in need of help. Too bad the film around Brody is fairly by-the-numbers, with a mean-spirited kicker that doesn’t imbue much originality to its imperiled-female plotline.

Director Brian DeCubellis, in his feature debut, does have a game supporting cast in Campbell Scott as Caroline’s wacko filmmaker husband, Steven Berkoff as a media mogul with a damning secret, and Jennifer Beals as Wren’s ever-less-patient wife. But when Wren gets to the bottom of the story — and “it’s all one story,” a newspaper colleague tells him wearily — you may find your credulity as strained as this old-school scribe’s marriage.