Miles away from being a thriller

Ewan McGregor: half man, half gerbil. This actor has always had, to my mind, something of a gerbilish look, which he plays up, in this supposedly erotic thriller, directed by feature first-timer Marcel Langenegger.

It is about as erotic as being stuck on a bus in traffic on a rainy afternoon and more than justifies the death penalty for anyone seeking to describe it as "Hitchcockian".

McGregor plays Jonathan McQuarry, a nerdy bean-counter employed to inspect the accounts of big Manhattan corporations.

He brings his most gerbilesque qualities to the role, a sad-sack guy with an uncool haircut and squaresville suit, hunched over his laptop late at night while all around people are enjoying themselves and positively thrumming to the rhythm of life.

Jonathan watches, fascinated, as a sexy woman cleaner impulsively pulls one of the male cleaners into the male lavatories for some hanky panky. That's the sort of thing contract cleaners in office blocks are always doing, of course - bursting as they are with energy, joie de vivre and an undemanding work schedule.

Then Hugh Jackman ambles in, playing Wyatt Bose, a masterful alpha-male corporate lawyer. He befriends Jonathan, and there follows an appallingly unconvincing scene in which the two of them get high. Jonathan opens up, they start bonding and giggling - I have never seen two actors giggle less convincingly - and at one stage, Jackman appears to improvise a boisterous get-outta-here shove right into McGregor's face, and McGregor actually looks fractionally discomposed.

Pretty soon, Wyatt clues Jonathan in on the hottest and most elite club in town: a no-strings-attached sex ring for the richest, coolest players of both sexes.

He calls one of the approved numbers on his cellphone and asks "Are you free tonight?" and then it's over to a five-star hotel room for some action. Through a mix-up over phones - but wait! is it a mix-up? - Jonathan finds himself getting involved and getting a call.

There follows one of the most embarrassing montages I have ever seen as Jonathan goes on a gerbilly journey of erotic self-discovery with a number of partners, including Charlotte Rampling. I didn't know where to look. But then he falls in love with one, known mysteriously as S (Michelle Williams), who then chillingly disappears. Jonathan is out of his depth in a world of extortion, blackmail and violent crime.

The movie earnestly transforms the real world into the saucer-eyed male fantasy of hot female yuppies who will be hot in a hotel room without needing to be paid afterwards. There's no rule against such a transformation, but it has to be vaguely consistent and believable.

Much of the plot hangs on the mysterious anonymity of all the participants: and yet Rampling's character is on the front cover of Newsweek.

Finding out her name and tracking her down could have helped with discovering the whereabouts of poor Michelle Williams.

A "seductive psychological thriller" is what we're promised. The title gives the game away.