Sex, Lies and Videotape film-maker Steven Soderbergh turns the old 1949 Burt Lancaster film noir, Criss Cross, into something a bit too cerebral and arty to excite, but still keeps up a level of interest and tension. Sex, Lies star Peter Gallagher plays a reformed gambler who returns to his home town to win back his ex-wife (Alison Elliott), but she's now the girlfriend of a local gangster (William Fichtner), so Gallagher plots an elaborate double cross. Sad to say that, though Gallagher is a solid actor and effective when properly used, here he lacks the needed star power that Lancaster brought to the role. And Soderbergh, while adhering faithfully to Don Tracy's original novel, even employing Criss Cross's writer Daniel Fuchs as co-writer, drops the ball thriller-wise, losing the plot in an over-rich tapestry of character explorations and time-swapping flashbacks. A film buried underneath the heavy weight of its own quality and ambition.