Novocaine

Hmm, dentistry noir. Martin plays Frank Sangster, an easy-going LA tooth doctor with a cornball hygienist-girlfriend (Dern), an occasionally irritating deadwood brother (Elias Koteas), and, it proves, a regulation-issue manipulable libido, exposed by grungy mystery patient Bonham Carter. Enter her mad bad brother Scott Caan, and soon Frank's on the run from hard evidence of murder most gruesome. A tongue-in-cheek comedy thriller riffing on the usual nefarious high jinks, Atkins' debut starts with some neat ideas ('lying is a lot like tooth decay'), but they don't play out; the characters are too shallow, the storytelling too standardised and self-amused, and the visual sensibility that bit too slap-happy for it to take.