D'Onofrio plays Valentino, a New York denizen and former porn star who is romancing both local lass Mary Carmen (Hayek) and Gary (Jane), who has arrived recently from the Midwest. Mary Carmen and Gary are less than thrilled with the notion of sharing their beloved, as they don't especially like one another, but a mixture of loyalty, lust and tragedy continually bind the trio together.

VELOCITY gets off to a promising start. Its first half-hour is elliptical, introducing people who are potentially irritating (it's already clear that the filmmakers find them more entertaining than most viewers will), but the action seems intriguingly unpredictable. Then the plot proper kicks in and, despite the grunge trappings, it becomes fairly easy to anticipate further developments.

Most modern audiences are surely ready for a romantic comedy/drama about unconventional domestic arrangements, but VELOCITY doesn't know how to draw us in to the characters' lives. It is possible to present characters who are irresponsible, self-deluded, not entirely bright and yet still charming -- a recent case in point is BOOGIE NIGHTS. Here, however, Valentino and Mary Carmen seem to be merely self-involved slobs who are neither imaginative nor compassionate enough to engage us. Gary, in contrast, is presented as a saint, but his goodness is sketched in.

Production values are good, though they reflect a modest budget, and the cast is hard-working and sincere. Chad Lindberg is persuasive (if whiny) as a deaf transvestite with a crush on Gary, Olivia D'Abo packs a lot of flirty desire and disappointment into a few scenes as an ex-co-worker of Valentino's, and Ethan Hawke turns up in an extended cameo as another struggling chum from the neighborhood. However, the touches of color provided by these characters have diminishing returns as VELOCITY continues.

The script keeps making ostensibly deep pronouncements that don't add up to much. The title comes from Gary's instant acceptance of Valentino's advice never to reveal his real name (although when Mary Carmen returns to her old neighborhood, we discover she's using her original moniker). The device seems to be an attempt to show how vulnerable and self-protective the characters are, illustrating their need to adopt alternate identities, but it comes off as mere affectation. We don't find out much else about Gary's background, either; without getting many clues as to who he was before, it's hard to know (or care) how his relationship with Valentino is changing him.

A subtitle tells us that VELOCITY is based on a true story. Without giving away the resolution (never a fair thing to do to any movie), the concluding portions of the film suggest that the situation could have been fascinating. Instead, it's as if a French menage-a-trois trifle had melded with an American TV movie of the week.

VELOCITY strains to be hip and slightly oblique on the one hand and soapily sentimental on the other. The two sensibilities simply don't mix well here. --- Abbie Bernstein - iF Magazine (http://ifmagazine.ifctv.com)