A PARTIAL REDEMPTION IN `SIMPATICO'; SLY SHEPARD PLAY HS ITS MOMENTS, BUT YOU CAN BET IT FREQUENTLY GOES OFF-TRACK.

Byline: Reed Johnson Staff Writer

The thin, fragile line between success and failure is one of playwright Sam Shepard's career-long obsessions. So it's ironically fitting that Matthew Warchus' movie version of Shepard's sly horse-racing fable ``Simpatico'' should straddle that line with the precarious balance of a nervous jockey on derby day, until at last it slips clean off the saddle.

``Simpatico,'' which is making a one-week Oscar-qualifying run, is a misfire. But it's an honorable, intelligent misfire from a promising rookie director who hasn't quite found a way to fully translate Shepard's lean, lyrical stagecraft into naturalistic cinema.

Yet the film's awkward stretches are partially redeemed by its gutsy if not always laugh-proof lead performances, by the jagged poetry of John Tolls' cinematography, and by Stewart Copeland's abstract country-western score.

Not enough for you? Don't forget that in Shepard's mytho-poetic America of fallen dreamers and ambitions that got off on the wrong foot, partial redemption is about the best a body can hope for.

It's certainly more than what we first expect for Vinnie (Nick Nolte), a broken-down barfly living out near Cucamonga, where's he's been nursing a guilty conscience and a busted love affair for decades. Seems that in the course of a generally reckless youth, Vinnie, his erstwhile best friend Carter (Jeff Bridges), and Rosie (Sharon Stone), the girl they both loved, hatched a get-rich plan of switching slow racing horses for fast ones, then betting the high odds.

When a California racing commissioner named Simms (played with raffish elegance by Albert Finney) caught onto the act, the trio hatched a blackmail plan to shut him up, using Rosie as bait.

But while their ill-gotten gains helped Carter grow up to become a millionaire thoroughbred breeder, with a plush Kentucky homestead and Rosie (now his wife) among his leggy trophies, Vinnie backslid into alcoholism and depression. Simms also was driven from racing by the scandal, the juicy Polaroid evidence of which Vinnie has preserved in a cardboard box.

Twenty years later, as the movie begins, Vinnie has come up with a payback scheme that involves luring Carter to California and confronting both Rosie and Simms, who has managed to put his past behind him and start a new life under an assumed name.

As the story tracks the men's disparate paths toward self-discovery, the cunning, feral Vinnie and the smooth, domesticated Carter seem to be swapping identities, like the rival brothers in Shepard's ``True West.'' Warchus, a British theater director best-known for helming the international hit play ``Art,'' has a sure feel for this cat-and-mouse dynamic, as do Nolte and Bridges.

Warchus and screenwriter David Nicholls also have come up with the bright idea of reconstructing the circa-1970 flashbacks of the horse-racing scam using youthful versions of Vinnie, Carter and Rosie. The ardency of the three young actors who play the principals' foolhardy former selves - Shawn Hatosy, Liam Waite and Kimberly Williams - helps make these sequences among the movie's most effective.

``Simpatico'' is named for the beautiful, aging Triple Crown-winning stallion that Carter is about to sell. As potentially heavy-handed as that symbolism is, here it makes a potent metaphor for Shepard's vision of the receding macho frontier, in which a stud is usually another name for a former champion who doesn't know his best days are over.

The facts

The film: ``Simpatico'' (R; strong sexuality and language).

The stars: Nick Nolte, Jeff Bridges, Sharon Stone, Albert Finney.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Matthew Warchus. Written by Warchus and David Nicholls, based upon Sam Shepard's play. Photography by John Toll. Released by Fine Line Features.

Running time: One hour, 46 minutes.

Playing: AMC Century 14 in Century City for one-week Academy Award-qualifying run.

Our rating: Two stars.

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Photo

Photo: Nick Nolte stars as Vinnie, a broken-down alcoholic nursing a guilty conscience in ``Simpatico.''