CHAPTER AND VERSE ON REALLY BAD LUCK.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Seth Warner has been having a really bad life. First, his beloved, pregnant wife went swimming in the ocean and never came back. Then a tornado wrecked his house while leaving the rest of the block unscathed. He lost his job, got hit by lightning, and his dog was crippled.

No wonder Seth has a bone to pick with God.

``Commandments'' has a promising premise: A decent guy unequipped with the forbearance of Job sets out to break all 10 scriptural laws until the Lord proves He isn't the ``raging psychopath'' Seth suspects. Somewhere in the movie's second half, once Seth has aced the easy sins and is trying to negotiate the squirmier, coveting and killing restrictions, writer/director Daniel Taplitz comes close to realizing the concept's potential.

But this comes after too much broad comedy, cliched dialogue and simplistic moralizing to save the movie's soul.

Aidan Quinn, he with the perpetually wounded eyes, is fine casting for the benighted, angry Seth. Following his latest hospitalization, he moves in with his sister-in-law, a lawyer named Rachel (Courteney Cox), and her philandering reporter-husband Harry (Anthony LaPaglia). Rachel is a good person who has yet to come to terms with her sister's death. Harry is a pure sleaze on the expose trail of an even more corrupt police official.

Rachel and Seth's attraction to one another is inevitable as, well, Seth and Harry's mutual dislike. This plot line sort of matches, intensity-wise, the initial commandment breaks. Seth chants in a Buddhist temple, Seth denounces God in his father's synagogue (a twofer, that); nothing to make you think our hero is going to do anything too imaginative, dangerous or disturbing.

Yet Seth's situation somehow grows from the cartoon calamity stage to one of palpable pain, especially as his course of action winds down to the really emotionally trying transgressions. But just as Quinn and Cox, if not LaPaglia, work up a head of demanding, interesting behavior, Taplitz gets a little too biblical about everything and pretty much reverses any hard-won character development.

I guess that was inevitable, too, considering the subject. But it's too bad that Taplitz's one truly enlightening idea - that, whether you're religious or not, the Ten Commandments offer sound guidelines for living - is overwhelmed by a few movie magic tricks.

Interestingly enough, ``Commandments' '' director of photography, Slawomir Idziak, also shot ``A Short Film About Killing,'' one of the late Krzysztof Kieslowski's ``Decalogue'' series, in which he brilliantly explored each commandment's relevance to modern life. Taplitz did not attempt anything on the scale of Kieslowski's vibrant philosophical inquiry, of course. But it's also worth noting that ``Commandments' '' best moments are the ones that come closest.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Commandments'' (R; sex, language, violence).

The stars: Aidan Quinn, Courteney Cox, Anthony LaPaglia.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Daniel Taplitz. Produced by Michael Chinich, Joe Medjuck and Daniel Goldberg. Released by Gramercy Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 27 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Courteney Cox, left, and Aidan Quinn star in ``Commandments,'' in which Quinn's character, beset by horribly bad luck, challenges God by trying to break all 10 scriptural laws.