ASH WEDNESDAY

WRITER-director-star Ed Burns abandons romantic comedy with mixed results in “Ash Wednesday,” an ambitious, guilt-suffused melodrama crippled by poor casting.

The problems start with Burns, whose unvarying laid-back style as an actor doesn’t fit the tortured character of Francis, a bartender in the pre-gentrified Hell’s Kitchen of 1983.

A former tough guy, Francis has been walking the straight and narrow since his younger brother Sean (Elijah Wood) was supposedly killed trying to stop a hit on Francis.

But now Sean has been spotted in the neighborhood – and Francis has been getting a little too friendly with Grace (Rosario Dawson), who thinks she’s Sean’s widow.

Dawson is the best thing here, and Malachy McCourt, James Handy and Oliver Platt deliver nice cameos as a gang boss, a priest in cahoots with Francis and a hit man.

But Wood, who sounds like he’s been vacationing in Middle Earth, is simply ludicrous as Sean.

Running time: 98 minutes. Rated R (violence, profanity). At the Sutton, E. 57th St. and Third Avenue.