'The Fall of the American Empire' an uneven mix of comedy and deep thought

“The Fall of the American Empire” - ★ ★

In 1986 the Quebec filmmaker Denys Arcand made “The Decline of the American Empire,” a talky ensemble comedy preoccupied with Canada's descent into moral and political malaise. With “The Barbarian Invasions” in 2003, Arcand continued his cultural critique, focusing on the same group of academics and adulterers.

With “The Fall of the American Empire,” Arcand leaves the core characters of his previous films behind but not their concerns. Once again, the filmmaker strives to mix comedy and thoughtfulness — here with uneven success — to comment on a society in which almost every good, service and relationship has been commodified. The film's protagonist, Pierre-Paul (Alexandre Landry), is an idealistic philosophy graduate whose job as a UPS-like delivery man affords him a sunny, book-lined apartment in Montreal. As “The Fall of the American Empire” opens, he is haranguing his girlfriend, a bank teller, about the intellectual poverty of novelists, philosophers and especially politicians. “I'm too intelligent,” he says at one point. “It's a handicap.”

When Pierre-Paul comes into an unexpected fortune after witnessing a crime, “The Fall of the American Empire” promises to turn into a classic caper flick, animated as much by vivid miscreants and improbable plot contrivances as by outrage at obscene levels of corruption and greed.

But the tone is uneven, never quite achieving the comic liftoff that feels continually at hand. The characters in “The Fall of the American Empire” are foils for the filmmaker's anxieties about modern life, here having mostly to do with the hypocrisy of the financial and legal worlds, as well as his longtime bête noire, the Canadian health bureaucracy: One petty criminal winds up in a hospital room that seems to be a jury-rigged broom closet.

That character happens to be black, as are all of the street-level hustlers and thieves in the film, a casting choice Arcand presumably made to point up the disparities of a racist criminal justice system but which often looks as if it's perpetuating the very problem it illustrates. Perhaps the film's most tiresome stereotype is a beautiful young woman named Camille (Maripier Morin), a hooker with a heart of gold who is endowed with just as weighty a brain: her escort website references Socrates and Racine.

When Pierre-Paul enjoys a gentle S&M scenario with Camille, while also quoting Plato's dialogues, “The Fall of the American Empire” reaches peak eyeroll-inducing wish fulfillment.

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Starring: Alexandre Landry, Maripier Morin

Directed by: Denys Arcand

Other: A Sony Pictures Classics release. Rated R for violence, sexual situations, nudity and language. In English and French with subtitles. 127 minutes