Imagine a scenario where cold-eyed killer Hannibal Lecter renounced his murderous ways and settles down in a luxurious open-plan chalet with a young wife.

Instead of contriving evermore gruesome ways of disposing of his victims, he pours his considerable intelligence into finding out why commercial airliners have tumbled out of the sky.

Things couldn't look better for Ted Crawford (Hopkins), the former Mr Lecter…until he twigs that his wife has been playing around with a young buck during regular trysts at a Los Angeles hotel.

After watching the couple cavort around the pool, Ted waits for the faithless hussy to get home before coolly despatching a bullet through her cheek and into her brain, rendering her comatose.

He admits everything to first cop on the scene, hostage negotiator Rob Nunally (Billy Burke), but there's just one complication - Nunally just happens to be the flatlining Mrs Crawford's married lover.

Primal Fear and Frequency director Gregory Hoblit has put together an enticingly intricate thriller poised on the game of cat-and-mouse between the Lecter-sharp Crawford and the chief prosecutor Willy Beachum (Gosling).

He's a high-flying legal eagle who's just accepted a coveted position at a top LA legal firm, an offer made all the more attractive by Rosamund Pike's ball-crushingly attractive attorney. But Ted is courting him in more ways than one.

When you see Hopkins in villainous mode it's difficult to shake off the image of Lecter (even when he appears to have snogged the Blarney Stone half-way through and turns Oirish).

Gosling continues a strong run of appearances as the ambitious winner who must choose between his current account and moral bankruptcy or sticking to a strict code of ethics and penury.

It's all efficiently executed... but one word of warning: put your hands over your ears and hum during the scene where David Stathairn's district attorney reveals the final plot twist with 20 minutes to go.

Tim Evans