With their unrelenting, nostalgic clutch on old-school noir rules (a girl and a gun, plans goes awry, an easily spotted macguffin), the Cummings boys paint themselves into the proverbial corner with a cop-out ex machina ending--at which point there is no longer a need for the title's "If."

So low-key that it verges on unconsciousness.

There's murder, deception, cruel twists and plenty of scenes at night in If I Didn't Care, but writer-directors Benjamin and Orson Cummings lack the fatalistic glue of true film noir to hold it all in place.

The movie itself is a shell. The characters, especially the unstable Hadley, barely exist. And even by the loose standards of film noir, the mechanics of the murder plot, and the story's jolts and twists toward its abrupt surprise ending, are unconvincing.

Featuring a strong central perf by Bill Sage, a raincoated detective turn by Roy Scheider and the upscale autumnal serenity of the Hamptons, If I Didn't Care remains a stylistic exercise in elegant gratuitousness.