City Of Ghosts, the directorial debut from actor Matt Dillon, is a nice-looking picture that is nearly ruined by the things that dog most actor-turned-auteurs.  Ghosts is narcissistic and lacks a sharp focus.  It could easily be 20 to 30 minutes shorter if its many unnecessary subplots were thrown overboard.  But Ghosts also has a decent cast and a stunning setting that will help to distract anyone curious enough to see the Flamingo Kid try his best at doing Joseph Conrad.

Dillon (Deuces Wild) plays Jimmy Cremming, an employee of Capable Trust Insurance who finds himself up to his neck in trouble when Hurricane Gabriel hammers North Carolina and his company lacks the cash to issue any claims checks.  When the feds begin to investigate, Jimmy pleads ignorance, blaming his mysterious boss for the bogus policies.  The first chance he gets, Jimmy hightails it out of Manhattan for Bangkok to find somebody named Marvin. Eventually, Jimmy lands in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh where he finally meets Marvin (James Caan, Way Of the Gun), plus a host of other wacky characters.

Turns out Marvin's insurance scam somehow involved the Russian mob, and he plans on using their money to build, along with a Cambodian ex-general, a giant luxury resort and casino in Phnom Penh.  Meanwhile, Jimmy experiences enough bad karma to last six lifetimes at the hands of muggers, a monkey (seriously), a campy Gérard Depardieu, local hookers and, a little more favorably, an archaeologist played by Natascha McElhone (Laurel Canyon). A friendly rickshaw driver (Kem Sereyvuth) helps Jimmy navigate his way through the various ins and outs of the Cambodian underworld.

Ghosts was actually filmed in Cambodia - the first picture made there in nearly 40 years.  Jim Denault's (The Believer) lush photography is almost enough to offset the sleazier aspects of Phnom Penh in any hopes the Cambodian Tourism Board may have had about converting viewers into potential vacationers (oh, yeah – who in their right mind would build a giant luxury resort-casino here?).  It is not, however, enough to offset the pseudo-noir, the giant plot holes or the drawn-out ending that borders on being ridiculously self-indulgent (more so than the rest of the film, I mean).

There's a dream sequence straight out of Twin Peaks, which makes a little sense when you learn Dillon co-wrote Ghosts' script with Barry Gifford, who worked on three different projects with David Lynch (they never make much sense, either, so we're par for the course).  With an ending that can't arrive soon enough, and clunky lines like, "How am I supposed to trust anyone when I can't trust myself?" it's hard to tell whether the bigger culprit here is the story or the ego of its director.

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for language and some violence