A profound and provocative exploration of cultural inheritance, communications technology and the roots and morality of terrorism, the Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan nimbly wades into an ideological minefield without detonating an explosion.

Moody, provocative and intellectually ambitious, Adoration is primed to elicit impassioned discussion among audiences.

At a minimum, his new film, Adoration, marks a welcome return to the Egoyan of old, the one who could spin seductive mysteries out of disassembled parts and show how images can be manipulated into comforting lies.

Shot on beautifully utilized film but employing images vividly from the Internet and mobile phones, it's an examination of the power that false ideas may have on people's imagination and beliefs when they are repeated over and over.

Though there are moments when the drama turns into intellectual debate, the film is also emotional, moving with a fluid, mounting tension and moments of anguish and strange, startling humour.

Some viewers may find the film confusing; I found it absorbing.

Adoration, Egoyan's most affecting film since "The Sweet Hereafter."

Scott Speedman gives a piercing, intelligent performance.

This ambitious think-piece ultimately smothers its good intentions in didactic revelations, earnest pleading and incessant violin music. Engrossing nonetheless, the story of a high schooler troubled by his parents' legacy reps one of the Canadian writer-director's most accessible efforts.

Egoyan's return to form is welcome, nevertheless Adoration adds up to less than we might have hoped for

Adoration, which hinges on a number of coincidences, contains some really fine performances.

Watching Adoration is like juggling three tennis balls, a porcupine, and a graduate thesis, but eventually it finds a unifying theme, that of tolerance melting away racial and intergenerational hatreds.

The end result is a movie considerably more absorbing to talk, write, and think about afterward than it is to actually watch.

Once all the pieces of the story are assembled, the whole thing turns out to be not that big of a deal.