Klepto

Running time: N/A

World Premiere Emily (Meredith Bishop) is a bored young temp, smoothly neurotic, who likes to spend her free time browsing through department stores. The problem is that she can't help sampling products like watches, CDs, and clothes without paying, just to see if she can get away with it. She meets her match in Nick (Jsu Garcia, Traffic, When We Were Soldiers), a surveillance expert with shady appetites of his own. Knee-deep in financial trouble with his ex-wife and under constant threat from a powerful drug kingpin, he hatches an audacious plan to rob his company's safe. To get the money out of the store, however, he needs the cool control of a kleptomaniac-Emily becomes the object of his obsessions. Thomas Trail's Klepto is a crackling psychological thriller with more than a hint from Hitchcock's Marnie. Trail's assured direction (making exceptional use of color, visual rhythm, and movement) and the performances make this a film to definitely see. - Fernando F. Croce