I’m not going to act like I wasn’t somewhat intrigued by "Dead Man Down." The revenge thriller reunites Niels Arden Oplev ­– the Swedish director whose dark, frosty work made the original "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" one of my favorite films of 2010 –­­ with his Lisbeth Salander, "Prometheus" star Noomi Rapace. The moody, soulful trailer sold the film mighty well too.

There is a lot going for "Dead Man Down," which makes it hurt even more to report that it's not a good movie. It’s a dull, brain-dead film that worse yet has art house aspirations, which in turn make it seem even duller and even more brain-dead. Consider it an intensity-free, intrigue-free thriller in the vein of "Drive." You could call it "Crawl."

"Dead Man Down" starts off immediately on the wrong foot, dropping the audience in the middle of a thematically on-the-nose chat between Victor (Colin Farrell) and his gangster friend Darcy (Dominic Cooper, looking like a member of a hipster reboot of Dexi’s Midnight Runners).

They are soon summoned by their leader Alphonse (Terrence Howard), as a dead body has been found in his basement freezer with a cryptic message. Alphonse assumes the culprit must be some rascally drug dealers rejecting their latest proposal, and an action scene breaks out.

Plunging the audience immediately into the middle of the plot isn’t a terrible approach, but writer J.H. Wyman expects the viewers to fill in a lot of holes instead of giving them a sensible starting point. Who are these characters? Why do I care about their family dilemmas? Why is this body in the basement so nerve-wracking for Alphonse? It almost feels like 15 minutes were chopped off the front of the movie for the sake of the running time (Joke’s on them; it still feels long).

My theory gets even more juice when we are introduced to Beatrice (Rapace), Farrell’s emotionally and physically scarred neighbor. She’s been watching Victor – something we are told not shown, the ultimate hack writer trick – and saw him murder a man, another crucial plot point we hear about rather than see. In order to keep her quiet, Victor must kill the drunk driver who scarred her face in a car accident. Victor, however, has his own revenge plan that he’s working on, as his wife and child were murdered two years before.

Oplev’s visual eye thankfully made the crossover to American cinema. His feel for action is solid, and there are several moments – including some really simple but gorgeous wide shots and a vertigo-inducing chase down a stairway – that are mesmerizing to look at and help to create a shady noir atmosphere.

He clearly knows what he’s doing. I’m just not quite sure what he’s doing directing this particular movie.

My enthusiasm took a hit when I saw WWE Studios produced the film, and it seems I had reason to be concerned. In terms of story and script, "Dead Man Down" is far more in line with the should-be direct-to-DVD star vehicles WWE Studios is used to dispensing ("The Marine," "12 Rounds") than the deliberately paced art house thriller Oplev is making. The result feels like using your finest china to serve Spaghettios.

At its worst (which is often), Wyman’s story is clumsy; at its best, it’s merely dreary and self-serious. The film attempts to juggle multiple plotlines, but each one gets more and more ridiculous, and it continually feels like it’s playing catch-up with its own story, stumbling around trying to fill the audience in on things that are happening or already happened.

It’s no use, however; the audience isn’t invested. The story is so shoddily and convolutedly put together than there’s no emotional attachment to anything or anyone, especially not these characters. Farrell and Rapace do their best, but their roles are one-note. Farrell mopes about his family, and Rapace mopes about her face – which frankly seems really petty when compared to Farrell’s murdered wife and child, even with the inclusion of some excessively malicious schoolchildren.

Even when the dialogue has a few moments of levity – mainly in the form of Beatrice’s doting mother (Isabelle Huppert, last seen as the daughter in "Amour") or awkwardly flirty chats about Tupperware and a chartreuse lucky rabbit’s foot – it’s so stiff and out of place that the audience isn’t quite sure how to react.

I give Oplev credit for trying to give "Dead Man Down" a stylish and moody sheen, but it just ends up making the film seem like it doesn’t realize how sloppy and schlocky it really is. A dumb movie can be a struggle, but a dumb movie that thinks it’s serious art is just a serious waste of time.