Another day, another densely-plotted European thriller–but Night of the Sunflowers doesn’t succeed half as well as Tell No One in its attempt to transplant and update the conventions of American crime drama. To be fair, it starts at a budgetary disadvantage, as shown by some intermittently shabby photography. But the biggest problem is a script that tries to be too clever and ends up being merely uninvolving, and an unorthodox structure that makes involvement with the film’s wide collection of characters far too difficult.

Without giving too much away, Sunflowers consists of six interrelated stories, which are all really part of the same story told from different perspectives. It’s a promising idea and one that’s worked well in other circumstances, with Pulp Fiction being an obvious if slightly unfair point of comparison. The problem is that with a fairly mediocre script that ladles on needless character development at the expense of tension or pace, it frustrates more than it ever enlightens.

What’s left is a film that constantly threatens to take off, and even does on occasions thanks to some raw and fast-paced moments of action–but is always dragged back to earth by the structure’s needless interference. Just as you start to care about a character they disappear for half an hour; just as one plot strand becomes involving another takes its place.

Sánchez-Cabezudo’s direction is occasionally flat, but it also shows plenty of promise, the leads are good, and the premise–complete with a couple of horrible moral dilemmas and a commendable degree of cold-bloodedness–is in places the stuff of great noir. And there are those, no doubt, who’ll admire the unconventional storytelling despite the strain that it places on other aspects of the film. So while I’d be pushed to whole-heartedly recommend Night of the Sunflowers, it’s well worth seeing for its virtues.