Wicker Park

Obsession is the key driver in this psychological drama that is filled with so many flashbacks and flash-forwards that it seems to get dizzy and trip over the very Hitchcockian elements it strains to emulate. Josh Hartnett (The Faculty) stars as a rising advertising executive who is on the verge of marrying a woman he does not really love. During a business dinner and just hours before he is to fly to China, he catches a fleeting glimpse, or so he believes, of the dancer from his near past who entered his life under coincidental circumstances, captured his heart and just as quickly vanished without explanation. The woman (Diane Kruger) disappears again with our young Chicago yuppie following a trail of loosely knotted clues to find her. Director Paul McGuigan (The Reckoning) keeps the story racing along, but it smacks of contrived manipulation rather than credibility.