Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor. Rated PG.

When Argentina’s The Secret in Their Eyes came out of nowhere to win the best-foreign-language Oscar in 2010, people grumbled—until they saw it. The haunting thriller wowed with a mix of complex characters and the ghosts of the grim 1970s desaparecidos era. Bouncing between 1974 and the present, it told the story of an unsolved murder that obsesses the central investigator—just as the horrors of the junta era still haunt a nation.

In his American remake, director-cowriter Billy Ray gets the unrelenting darkness right, but almost everything else wrong. The movie lacks anything resembling momentum. More importantly, it’s lost the original’s compelling historical context.

Still, Ray has made some interesting choices. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the retired investigator, who pines for his superior (Nicole Kidman) as much as he obsesses over the gruesome murder of his friend’s daughter. In the original, their social standings kept them from acknowledging their attraction, and though the racial difference adds to that tension, Kidman’s ice-queen routine kills the unrequited passion that should simmer between them.

And then there’s Julia Roberts, playing a female investigator who’s lost a teenage daughter instead of the man who’s lost his wife in the original. She’s playing against type here, and it’s fascinating to watch Pretty Woman become the walking dead through grief—but again, the transformation often comes off as more physical than deeply explored.

Ray transports the story to post–9/11 America, but he never builds a palpable paranoia. What you get is a film where everyone looks pained but doesn’t have a lot to do. Yes, all the characters have secrets in their eyes, but you’ll get frustrated waiting for them to be revealed. Some things really do get lost in translation.