This modest resurrection of the 1970s paranoid thriller at times has a lurking, foreboding quality to it but ultimately is too murky and dark for its own good.
Wander begins by mentioning victims of abuse and robbery in a caption before the aftermath of a car accident apparently has a young woman taking a bullet to the chest. In the presence of the medical examiner and the sheriff this incident doesn’t have much investigative priority.
Aaron Eckhart assumes main character status as a private eye and former cop Arthur still coping with the harrowing aftermath of an auto mishap which took his daughter’s life and subjugated his wife (Nicole Steinwedell) to an assisted-living facility.
A jaded Jammy Cleats (Tommy Lee Jones) joins Arthur from a remote trailer doing a conspiracy-minded podcast. This tale, intended for suspicious folks, proceeds with Arthur heading to the eponymous burgh after being retained by the woman’s mother to look into a curious demise.
Plot turns are manifested by scenarist Tim Doiron in a way that incorporate notions of, maybe, some burgeoning malevolence as fantasy collides with reality. As the unkempt protagonist latches onto to a conspiracy of explosive, chest-embedded chips to be detonated upon departure.
Within all of what is mostly undistinguished and finally indistinct Eckhart’s theatricality (in what may be construed as wild fantasies at times) as an unstable, leavening narrator is buffered by most of his co-stars. Notably, the understated arrogance of a pampering Jones that can dissuade you from the distracting, even distressing Wander.