Mike Hodges' gritty new film noir I'll Sleep When I'm Dead begins in enigma and snakes its way into stark clarity.

A near-great British neo-noir, harsh yet hypnotic. Its psychological vortex can suck you in and leave you reeling.

The film is held together by Clive Owen, who spends most of his time on screen hidden beneath matted hair and a scruffy beard but still has more aura than any actor around.

Upon closer inspection its story and characters grow more mysterious, ultimately bordering on the unfathomable.

The spare and unsparing tone of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead makes it as existential -- and as original -- a whodunit as they come.

In order to appreciate I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, you have to be willing to absorb unhurried film noir, and to accept that the film's version of "closure" is a little frustrating.

In I'll Sleep When I'm Dead,' master of stylish criminality Mike Hodges presents a nighttime London of sharp suits, distorted jazz notes and shiny luxury sedans cruising dirty streets.

The finish, too, is enigmatic, but in the hands of Hodges, with his masterful touch in conveying how deep run the rivers of regret, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead may take its place with "Get Carter" as a classic British gangster film.

If you surrender to the film's often inexplicable rhythms, if you let its dark materials reach out and envelop you, it can be a curiously rewarding experience -- a blend of silences and sudden bursts of violence that, despite its highly stylized manner, feels more edgily lifelike and more disturbing than most movies.

"Croupier," the director's comeback film of 2000, which also starred Mr. Owen, is a riskier, more interesting exercise in English noir than I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, but the new film, whose title comes from a Warren Zevon song, nonetheless serves as a fine stylistic showpiece.

Though there's less to the film than seduces the eye, the allure of those surfaces can be hypnotic.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead has its problems: As beautifully made as it is, Hodges leaves some crucial portions of the story maddeningly unclear, particularly at the end.

At times, this makes the film easier to appreciate than it is to watch: The story is perfectly clear, but the film's style takes its cues from the characters' oblique emotions in a way designed to freeze viewers out.

A consuming and stimulating work and a theoretical thriller, it is a film which could only be created by a remarkably skillful filmmaker.