This film from Barbet Schroeder owes a small debt of inspiration to the Dartmouth Zantop murders -- and a larger one to In Cold Blood, Compulsion, Rope, and the Leopold & Loeb case that started our culture's fascination with pairs of young men who commit seemingly motiveless murders. But don't look to Tony Gayton's screenplay for insight into what transforms some Nietzsche-reading teens into little Raskolnikovs. This film is much more interested in procedure: how the two thrill-killers (Michael Pitt and Ryan Gosling) scheme to fool the forensic scientists and psychological profilers, and how the tidiness of their calculation ironically threatens to trip them up. This sort of thing is handled with such skill every week on TV (CSI, the Law & Order shows) that it's a wonder the filmmakers even bothered.

Murder by Numbers is also more about the homicide detective, your standard-issue movie sleuth, a hard-boiled loner and borderline alcoholic who's teamed with a green partner, stymied by rulebound superiors, and haunted by a case from the past. Sandra Bullock, perhaps looking to stretch beyond vulnerable cuteness, has the role here, and she gives the character dark and unexpected shadings, though it helps that she's been cast opposite the recessive and meek Ben Chaplin as the rookie.

There's one other duo to consider: the Barbet Schroeder who directed such morally complex, psychologically penetrating films as Reversal of Fortune and Our Lady of the Assassins and the Barbet Schroeder who directed such baroque, exploitative thrillers as Single White Female and Desperate Measures. It's the second Schroeder at work here, and the result, though grimly efficient, truly is by the numbers. At the Apple Valley, Entertainment, Flagship, Holiday, Hoyts, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas.