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Verdict: Bob Hoskins will creep you out in this quietly unsettling little film.

Details: Starring Bob Hoskins. Directed by Atom Egoyan. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual situations and implied violence. 1 hour, 54 minutes.

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Review: Think Norman Bates had mother issues? Meet Joseph Hilditch (Bob Hoskins), the protagonist of Atom Egoyan's unsettling new film, "Felicia's Journey."

Hilditch could be construed as Britain's answer to Norman: While Norman was as flighty as the birds he stuffed, Hilditch is as sturdy as an English bulldog and as comforting as a tea cosy. No wonder one of his favorite pastimes is cooking. He especially enjoys watching tapes of an old '50s cooking show in which the chef is a flamboyantly oo-la-la French woman named Gala (Arsinee Khanjian, the director's wife). She is also, we later learn, Hilditch's late mother about whom he is, to say the least, conflicted.

OK, so Hilditch is a meticulous, lonely, mother-obsessed eccentric. Nothing wrong with that. Nor is there anything overtly wrong with the courtly, protective interest he takes in girls on their own. So when Felicia (Elaine Cassidy), an unwed pregnant Irish teen turns up in his hometown looking for the boy who seduced and abandoned her, Hilditch naturally takes an interest. He even tries to help her find the lawn-mower factory where the lad allegedly works. As he explains, "Lost girls. All on their own journey. In their time of need, they counted on me."

Which is where they went wrong. For Hilditch is the kindest, politest serial killer you'll never want to meet.

Based on William Trevor's 1994 novel, "Felicia's Journey" is less interested in its serial-killer scenario than in being a dual character study. On the one hand, there's Felicia, burdened with memories of a creepy emerald-drenched Ireland, a dying great-granny and a disapproving father who insists her no-good beau has joined the British Army. Everything about her is simultaneously forlorn and fresh, yet she exudes life. She's the puppy put in a bag and thrown off a bridge who somehow manages to survive.

Then there's Hilditch, burdened by videotaped memories of a mommy-grotesque, cooped up in his cramped, curio-filled mansion, a musty cloud of death seeking human contact as best he can. The elaborate spider-and-fly stratagems he uses to snare Felicia are eerily fascinating. He even goes so far as to invent a dying wife at the nearby hospital.

"Felicia's Journey" isn't likely to strike as universal a chord as Egoyan's breakthrough picture, "The Sweet Hereafter." Like most of his work, it's elliptical, intellectual and distant. We worry about Felicia yet, perversely, we worry just as much about Hilditch. Some of this is because of Egoyan who hasn't lost his taste for life's weirder corners. But most of the credit must go to the amazing Hoskins who hasn't been this good since "The Long Good Friday" and "Mona Lisa."

He gives the role a twisted delicacy worthy of Peter Lorre in "M." When he takes Felicia under his burly wing, you almost expect him to whistle a few bars of "In the Hall of the Mountain King." But this disturbing, autumnal movie has its own appropriate theme song: "You Are My Special Angel."

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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