An island of confusion where time, perspective and plots lose all meaning

You'd be hard-pressed to describe the idyllic setting of the Cayman Islands as a West Indies paradise based on the exploitive view we're meant to care about in "Haven."

This uneven piece of nonlinear narrative has been kicked around, mulled over, cut and recut since premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in 2004. Unfortunately, no amount of tinkering has saved the movie from its fate as an ineffective experiment about ugly things happening in a beautiful place.

Multiple storylines follow a naive Miami businessman (Bill Paxton) involved in ambiguously shady deals and money hidden from the feds in Cayman's notorious tax-haven banks; a Romeo and Juliet thread about lovelorn natives (Orlando Bloom and Zoe Saldana) and their attendant antagonists; a clutch of small-time criminals preying on each other; and the tourist trade that's the island's second-biggest industry (banking being the first).

Movie review

Showtimes and trailer

"Haven," with Orlando Bloom, Agnes Bruckner, Joy Bryant, Stephen Dillane, Anthony Mackie, Bill Paxton, Victor Rasuk, Zoe Saldana. Written and directed by Frank E. Flowers. 98 minutes. Rated R for language, drug use, sexual content and some violence. Several theaters.

Writer/director Frank E. Flowers tries to emulate the perspective-shifting devices used to such impressive effect in Alejandro González Iñárritu's "21 Grams." But here the manipulation of time frames and points of view is simply a clutter of confusion and ill-advised jump cuts that may have you thinking the projectionist slapped the reels together in the wrong order.

Some of these plot lines meet in expected conclusions; others evaporate in oblique dissolutions that are merely unsatisfying.

Thrown into the mix of scenario and multiethnic character dialogue is a wayward assortment of accents, some of which require subtitles. This idiomatic mix of pidgin English and gangsta-ese has become part of the local dialect, thanks to the Anglo-Americanization brought by the suspicious financial trade and constant spring-break attitude of natives and expatriates alike.

Along with this authentic sense of place, another saving grace is the large ensemble cast that works well with the material at hand. Especially good are Victor Rasuk as a slothful sixth-generation Caymanian who's traded his heritage for American hip-hop culture, and Stephen Dillane as a British tax exile banker on a downward moral slide. Curiously, rising superstar Orlando Bloom (who co-produced) is one of the least appealing faces in the crowd.

There are lots of interesting things that "Haven" could have been, but a compelling tale of love, greed and darkness of the soul is not one of them.

Ted Fry: tedfry@hotmail.com