A DARK -- BUT NOT TERRIBLY COMPELLING -- `NIGHT'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

`The Night Listener'' strives to be different from your average psychological thriller.

It's more of a psycho-emotional puzzle piece than anything to really get tensed up about. But if you're going to take that route, crackerjack character delineation is vital -- as is a plot that constantly keeps audiences guessing until the end. The movie attempts but never really hits either of these gears.

Based on ``Tales of the City'' author Armistead Maupin's novel -- which the writer in turn claims was inspired by a similar incident that he experienced -- ``Listener'' seems to set out all the motivational information it could possibly need to in its short, 82-minute running time. Yet, by the end, we feel frustrated. The crucial reasons why the main players behave in the obsessive manner that they do is overlooked ... and we've figured out the mystery long before the folks on screen do.

Casting Robin Williams as protagonist Gabriel Noone is part of the problem. Though perfectly credible as a heartbroken, middle-age gay man who hosts a late-night radio storytelling show out of New York, Williams can't quite fully express Gabriel's need to out. As he delves ever more riskily and recklessly into the question of who his new, troubled friend actually may be, Gabriel becomes more and more the fact-hunting detective, when he should be the inner child (it's OK to use that term; the film itself offers several put-downs of New Age thinking) desperate to find a kindred spirit.

The questionable person comes in the form of a 14-year-old boy, Pete Logand (Rory Culkin). Gabriel is introduced to him through their mutual book editor. Pete has written a harrowing account of abuse and exploitation by his pervert parents and their cronies. He's now living safely with an adoptive mother in rural Wisconsin, and Pete loves listening to Gabriel's show.

Moved deeply by the boy's soon-to-be-published manuscript, the broadcaster gives Pete his home phone number. Regular conversations with the kid and his new mom Donna (Toni Collette) ensue.

But before you can say JT Leroy, questions arise about the legitimacy of Pete's nightmare narrative, then about Pete himself. Gabriel grows so concerned about these doubts -- which with all his heart he does not want to believe--- that he pays a surprise visit to the wintry Midwest in order to clear things up. Once he's there, of course, the truth just becomes murkier.

Directed by Patrick Stettner (``The Business of Strangers''), ``Night Listener'' pulls a few visual tricks that could be interpreted as narrative cheating. But they can also be justified as depicting the world in a way Gabriel has every reason to imagine it. The story's deeper inquiries into truth and fiction don't go anywhere particularly intriguing, though. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that Terry Anderson, whom Cannavale's character in the film is based on, came back to work on the screenplay adaptation with his former partner Maupin.

A number of gay issues are intelligently -- but, again, not very involvingly -- addressed in the film. By far the most shocking and suspenseful scene (maybe the only one) involves Gabriel being mistaken for a pederast, which is so not the case. There's a strange blind person involved, too, which makes for some unsettling moments but seems kind of gratuitous at the same time.

Although it may not satisfactorily work all of its many ideas out, ``The Night Listener'' does thoughtfully explore the myriad games people play -- on themselves as well as others -- in the universal search for gratifying affection.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE NIGHT LISTENER - Two and one half stars

(R: nudity, sex, language, children in jeopardy, drug use, violence)

Starring: Robin Williams, Toni Collette, Bobby Cannavale, Rory Culkin, Sandra Oh.

Director: Patrick Stettner.

Running time: 1 hr. 22 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Odd mystery about a radio storyteller whose long-distance relationship with a troubled adolescent author may not be what it seems. Unusual, thoughtful, but not very compelling.