A THOUGHT-PROVOKING TALE IN 'DOGWALKER'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Race, class, sex, drugs, age, money, philosophy of life: It's amazing what all can get mixed up when you walk a dog in L.A.

Writer-director Paul Duran's ``The Dogwalker'' is a pleasingly unpredictable stroll across all of the boundaries that we believe separate us - and that actually do. It's a shaggy-dog tale from start to finish, but one with surprisingly emotional complications and connections. At its core a study of one selfish cynic's dire discovery of his own conscience, the picture also draws deft portraits of a variety of unfulfilled people who, just given the chance, prove capable of both great warmth and callous cruelty.

The film starts out with a hard-boiled voice-over by one Jerry Cooper (Will Stewart) that vaguely explains why he's been reduced to sleeping in an old car that won't run. The bottom fell out of some scheme he was involved in, but unlike most of his petty criminal friends, Jerry feels he at least has the advantage of being white.

And not bad-looking, either, which helps a lot once his main chance arrives. When Alma (Carol Gustafson) is knocked over by her dog Lucky, Jerry takes the old lady to the hospital. Out of gratitude and a kind of necessity, the woman's daughter Helene (Stepfanie Kramer, from the old ``Hunter'' TV series) hires Jerry to be Alma's live-in dog-walker - and, by extension, caretaker of the cantankerous old gal. It's fairly clear that Helene is interested in more personal services from the new hire, as is her own, aggressive jailbait daughter Susan (Nicki Aycox).

Anyway, before he realizes just how lucky he's gotten, Jerry plots to burglarize Alma's home with the help of drug-dealer Mones (Tony Todd), incompetent mechanic K.C. (Cress Williams) and young Blonde (Walter Emanuel Jones), an outlaw-in-training with a rich mama. But their plans go awry when Alma's elderly bridge partners turn up the night of the heist and bond with the keystone krooks.

Relationships grow increasingly complicated, especially between cataract-plagued Ike (the great, once-blacklisted John Randolph) and Mones (yes, they have dope-smoking in common). Meanwhile, Jerry is stretched to the snapping point between his natural amorality and his new-found sense of responsibility to others.

Kind of like a Denis Leary without the desperation to prove something, Stewart has an easygoing comic insouciance that keeps you on his otherwise unlikable character's side. And he doesn't play for sympathy; even when Jerry starts thinking decently, the scent of selnterest is never far from the surface.

Which, let's admit, is the case with most of us. And who hasn't, like Jerry, tried, against their instincts, to do right by others, only to have their instincts proven right?

``Dogwalker's'' modest but substantial accomplishment lies in showing us how much vastly dissimilar people have in common with each other and, by extension, with us. Whether we like it or not.

THE DOGWALKER - Three stars

(Not rated: sex, drug use, nudity, language, violence)

Starring: Will Stewart, Stepfanie Kramer, John Randolph, Tony Todd, Carol Gustafson, Cress Williams, Nicki Aycox.

Director: Paul Duran.

Running time: 1 hr. 45 min.

Playing: Sunset 5, West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: Indie tragicomedy about an L.A. lowlife's life-changing encounter with a dysfunctional middle-class family is full of surprising relationships and realistic absurdities.