'Secret Window' fine for a while

If a movie requires the lead actor to spend a good chunk of his onscreen time talking to himself and Popeye is unavailable because of contractual disputes, it's hard to do better than Johnny Depp. His performance as the trebly beset writer Mort Rainey is the highlight of the underwhelming Secret Window, which opens today. This movie is a suspense thriller whose only suspense comes from an audience wondering if the picture will hit its promised 97-minute running time.

Secret Window dramatizes the plight of Mort, who is suffering from writer's block. This was triggered by the tumultuous break-up of his marriage to Amy (Maria Bello) and the protracted divorce proceedings. The writer and director, David Koepp, stages the events leading to the end of Mort's marriage so well that most of what follows is a letdown.

And what follows is Mort, who now lives in a remote cabin, sleeping his way through a depression until a thunderous knock at the door rouses him from a sofa almost as lived in as his bathrobe. He hauls his blond-tipped bedhead to the door, where he encounters John Shooter (John Turturro), which brings up Mort's Misery No. 3. Dressed ominously in a big-brimmed black hat and a work shirt buttoned to the neck -- he looks like an Amish hitman -- Shooter drawls menacingly, "You stole my book.'' Groggy and astounded, Mort is confronted with the evidence: Shooter's short story reads exactly like Mort's best-selling murder mystery Secret Window. And worse, Shooter gives Mort three days to set things right, or else.

Much of the plot turns on Mort's getting his hands on a copy of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine to prove that he published his story before Shooter wrote his version. And on Mort's need to be home when the phone rings. In other words the film takes place in a charming little seaside town without cellphones, Internet access or a library; sadly, given the current state of affairs, only the last is not so improbable.

Secret Window was adapted by Koepp from Stephen King's novella Secret Window, Secret Garden. It has been opened up to let too much air into the room, and the sluggish pacing will allow even the drowsiest viewer to keep up with the story. A number of amusing little clues turn up, involving some snappy gestures from Depp. And the director abets the mischief by planting a copy of Tom Robbins's farcical magic-realism novel Villa Incognito in plain view.

Timothy Hutton plays Ted, the other man/other menace. (Amusingly, his dad, Jim Hutton, played Ellery Queen in an old series and would have wrapped things up before the trailer ended.) And Charles Dutton gives a gentle authority to the role of Mort's bodyguard.