'The Dinner' a shapeless morality play salvaged by excellent performances

Director Oren Moverman adapted a Herman Koch novel for his dark, provocative morality play "The Dinner," yet the drama plays like a set stage piece clumsily opened up with underwhelming flashbacks and a Civil War leitmotif that bludgeons us over the head like a blunt instrument.

Strong, focused performances give "The Dinner" sufficient reason to be seen. But the finessed, sometimes chilling portraits of middle-class denizens in moral crisis don't give much shape to Moverman's blobby narrative.

Steve Coogan plays a history teacher named Paul, the voice-over narrator. More accurately, he's the only character allowed interior monologues. And he might be mentally disturbed.

Smart, acerbic and downright brutal in his shotgun blasts against society, education, history and family, Paul (a Mr. Hyde version of Woody Allen) frets to his wife Claire (Laura Linney) about going to dinner with his brother Stan (Richard Gere), a congressman running for governor.

They meet at an upscale restaurant that Paul loathes, along with Stan's second wife Kate (Rebecca Hall). Stan insists they talk about "it," and the pronoun becomes Moverman's wilted carrot on a stick to lure us further into a sticky wicket of moral, political and maternal conflict.

"The Dinner" doesn't get to the real main course until after we confirm that Paul's bored, ignored teen son Mike (Charlie Plummer) has burned a homeless woman alive, just because. Stan's teenage sons (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick and Miles J. Harvey) might have been involved. The cops don't know who did it. Yet.

The relatively bland "Dinner" suddenly gets spiced up. Linney rages with maternal ferocity, defending her son and portraying the dead woman as an insignificant entity who threatened him.

Kate supports her, leaving the congressman as the single voice of moral authority. "What will he become," Stan asks, "if he gets away with this?"

This rare dramatic red meat doesn't last long. "The Dinner" heads to an unsatisfying finish, seemingly in mid-sentence.

As for the American Civil War, it fascinates Paul so much that Moverman serves a big chunk of it in an enhanced educational video.

There's a civil war in this movie? We guessed.