Simpatico

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Many years ago, Lyle (Jeff Bridges) and Vinnie (Nick Nolte) pulled a complicated race-track scam. It made the former rich, the latter guilt-ridden. Unaware of the statute of limitations, Vinnie now belatedly launches into a more muddled plan of blackmail and retribution, requiring the complicity of the chief victim of the original crime (Albert Finney), who has made slightly pretentious peace with the past. Derived from a not-very-successful Sam Shepard play, this is a shaggy, overstuffed film. But the actors (including Sharon Stone as Lyle's drunken wife and Catherine Keener as a wise innocent) are all, for some reason, inspired, and the result is curiously, if fitfully, intriguing.

--By Richard Schickel