Suspenser in the tried-and-true pattern of the Boy Who Cried Wolf: a mendacious early adolescent (Matt O'Leary, vulnerable as required) who discovers that his well-heeled new stepdad (Vince Vaughn) is first of all a heel and next of all a psychopathic killer. The police might be forgiven for disbelieving that he discovered the second thing through the cheap trick of hiding behind the front seat of the family van: it's difficult to believe it while seeing it with your own eyes. But the boy's biological father (John Travolta, not camping it up for a change) cannot be forgiven, cannot forgive himself, for his disbelief. Conventional yet conscientious and well-constructed, the movie pays adequate attention to the misgivings of both father and son over the life-altering choices of the ex-wife and mother (Teri Polo, a bland blend of Jodie Foster and Helen Hunt), and it cocks an ear to the loudness with which money talks in America, and it gives a splashy, show-stopping role to Steve Buscemi, a lowlife from the wicked stepfather's past, who turns up unbidden, and in a pullover sport shirt and checked jacket, at the formal wedding ceremony ("Did you register for a soup tureen? That's what I'd have got you if I'd been invited"), and who then incongruously hangs around the picturesque burg on the Maryland coast ("You know what I'm noticing? I haven't seen any adult bookstores in this town"). Although the finale goes voguishly over the top, or at any rate past a sensible stopping point, director Harold Becker (The Onion Field, Taps, Sea of Love, Malice, among others) maintains a kind of integrity in his continuing and career-long avoidance of camera acrobatics and FX pyrotechnics. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd