In the languid remake “Secret in Their Eyes,” the missing “The” in its title poses a more intriguing mystery than anything on the screen.
If you’ve never seen the 2009 original from Argentina, which won the Oscar for best foreign-language picture, do. It’s extremely high-grade pulp, satisfying as a romance and a crime drama. Writer-director Billy Ray’s Americanized redux isn’t a disaster; it keeps its head down and does its job. But nothing quite gels, or clicks, or makes itself at home in its adopted setting.
The locale is now Los Angeles. In the screenplay’s 2002 sequences, FBI agent Ray Kasten, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and district attorney investigator Jess Cobb, played by Julia Roberts, work on a joint counterterrorism task force with deputy DA Claire Sloan (Nicole Kidman). Next door to an L.A. mosque suspected of harboring a terrorist sleeper cell, the body of a young woman turns up in a dumpster. She is Jess’ daughter, and for 13 years Ray, who eventually leaves the FBI, devotes his spare time to solving this murder.
What made the Argentine “Secret in Their Eyes” so successful? For one thing, the romantic yearning was thick and all-pervasive. In the remake it’s thin and indecisive. Ray has a thing for Claire, and holds the torch for years, walking her to her car each night and generally making Those Eyes at her. But there’s nothing in the romance, and Kidman gives a stiff, strangely affected performance.
