Stop me if you've heard this one before

At this point in time, we, as an audience, have learned to expect things from the psycho-killer genre: elaborate mutilation; a hip and queasy soundtrack; and motives that hinge on repressed childhoods and/or too many video games. So when you're confronted with the story of a band of computer-wiz types attempting to systematically destroy their city, much in the same manner one would destroy a Sim City in some elaborate PlayStation scenario, you don't exactly hold your breath. Rather, you're tempted to sit back in a plush chair, stick a cigar in your mouth and say in a bored, Hollywood drawl: "OK. Surprise me."

Sadly, however, it just doesn't happen. "Nadie Conoce a Nadie" ("Nobody Knows Anybody," released here as "Puzzle") is a Spanish psycho-thriller that, had it come out a decade ago, would have elicited gasps and gulps and met with what we in the business call "wide critical acclaim." As it stands, this is a work that came too late for the party. All the others, movies like "Seven," "Silence of the Lambs" and "The Bone Collector," have already come and gone. We have lost the capacity to be surprised by criminals who live in a virtual world of puzzles and games. Or in this case, criminals who get their rocks off thinking up puzzles based on gothic motifs. It's gotten to the point where you wish you could be a gum-chomping Bernadette Peters for the pleasure of saying out loud in the theater: "You think we haven't seen this awreddy?"

Still, "Nadie" yields some exotic moments. The incredibly blue Seville sky, the streets dazzling in sunlight, the dark and sinister festivities of Holy Week. And it stars the Spanish prince-in-residence, Eduardo Noriega. Consider that Tom Cruise saw him in "Open Your Eyes" and immediately bought the rights for a remake. One likes to imagine Noriega when he heard this news -- smiling briefly with the side of his mouth, taking a short sip from his gin glass and saying "So?"