MOVIE REVIEW : A Stylish Film Noir Reaches Its ‘Boiling Point’ : Despite its action thriller ad, the movie proves to be a sophisticated pleasure, offering witty adult entertainment.

Despite an action thriller ad campaign, “Boiling Point” (citywide) is writer-director James B. Harris’ superior contemporary film noir , originally called “Money Men,” which is the title of the Gerald Petievich novel upon which it is based.

The ads tell us that Wesley Snipes plays “a cop who’s reached the boiling point,” where in fact his Jimmy Mercer is a Treasury agent of formidable self-control in pursuit of the person or persons who have killed his partner.

We’re being led to expect another “Passenger 57” when what we’ve got instead is a stylish, reflective, deliberately B-scale movie that’s more like Hawks’ “The Big Sleep” and boasts an ensemble Grade A cast and emphasizes character over action.

“Boiling Point” is taut and crisp, and when it’s required, Harris handles violence with swift dispatch rather than the large-scale fireworks that have become de rigueur.

There’s a real danger, however, that action fans will be disappointed while those who are looking for witty adult entertainment that offers the pleasures of film noir classics will be put off by the ads.

Alas, “Boiling Point” is the kind of film more likely to get a chance to be appreciated in Paris--it was, in fact, produced by a French subsidiary--than in Hollywood, which is its principal setting.

Snipes’ Mercer and Dennis Hopper’s Red Diamond are men with seven-day deadlines. Mercer has been given a week to close the case himself on his partner’s death before being transferred to Newark; Red, a lifelong con man with a taste for counterfeit money, has the same amount of time to come up with the cash he owes a Mafioso (Tony Lo Bianco, in a chilling performance of false bonhomie), an old associate from whom he had hoped to borrow 50-grand to get started after having just finished serving a five-year stretch at Terminal Island.

Although billed second, Hopper is the film’s dominating presence, and he gives us one of his best portrayals ever, as a flashy, middle-aged loser, a guy increasingly desperate behind the brash facade typical of a used car salesman. He’s like Jack Lemmon’s real estate salesman in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” but firmly on the wrong side of the law. He’s shrewd, seasoned, decidedly dangerous and a shameless liar, but you can plainly see that he’s never been very smart.

His mounting panic is all too obvious whereas Mercer, so well played in understated style by Snipes, keeps his cool even when he feels as if he’s dying on the inside from loneliness, a feeling intensified by the loss of his partner. (The one place where Red does feel confident is on the dance floor, and he can’t go to the Palace often enough to glide and swing to the nostalgic music of an orchestra with a ‘40s big-band repertoire.)

For 20 years the cliche of the law enforcement officer’s personal life is that his wife has left him--or is about to do so, saying inevitably that his work is all wrong for a man with a family.

Typical of the freshness of “Boiling Point” is that just when Mercer receives this deathless remark from his ex-wife, both Diamond and his naive but lethal young protege Ronnie (Viggo Mortensen) are received with open arms by their women, who know better but care for them anyway.

If Valerie Perrine’s attractive waitress is far, far better than Red deserves, Mercer does have the consolation of Lolita Davidovich’s elegant and wise high-class call girl, who would consider going off with him but only if he doesn’t resign from his job.

With its spare, moody score and King Baggot’s color cinematography that’s lit like it’s black-and-white, “Boiling Point” is a smoky, sophisticated pleasure throughout. (With the Hollywood Roosevelt and the Palace as key locales, the film scarcely ever strays farther away than Union Station.)

Contributing strongly to that pleasure are such sterling actors as Dan Hedaya as Mercer’s stalwart new partner, Seymour Cassel as a very canny bad guy and Jonathan Banks, a standout as a slick, crooked Century City attorney.

“Boiling Point” (rated R for violence and for language) is the work of a man who knows his way around the crime genre: Harris produced Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing,” directed the 1987 “Cop” from James Ellroy’s “Blood on the Moon” and is now developing a film of Ellroy’s, “The Black Dahlia.”

‘Boiling Point’

Wesley Snipes Jimmy Mercer

Dennis Hopper Red Diamond

Lolita Davidovich Vikki

Viggo Mortensen Ronnie

A Warner Bros. presentation of a Hexagon Films production. Director James B. Harris. Producers Marc Frydman, Leonardo de la Fuente. Executive producers Rene Bonnell, Olivier Granier. Screenplay by Harris; based on the novel “Money Men” by Gerald Petievich. Cinematographer King Baggot. Editor Jerry Brady. Costumes Molly Maginnis. Music Cory Lerios, John D’Andrea. Production design Ron Foreman. Art director Russ Smith. Set decorator Rick Caprarelli. Sound Russell C. Fager. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (for violence and for language).