C

It’s inevitable that Douglas McGrath’s “Infamous” will be referred to as “Capote” Lite. This second picture in as many years about the effect that writing “In Cold Blood” had on Truman Capote covers the same ground as the subdued but powerful film by Bennett Miller that recently won Philip Seymour Hoffman his Oscar, but it isn’t nearly as effective. While “Capote” is likely to be remembered, this take on the author will quickly pass into the dustbin of history.

So too will the performance of Toby Jones in the lead role. Jones looks very much like Capote–more so than Hoffman–and he’s got the voice down, too, but his performance comes across as impersonation, lacking the shadings and undercurrents Hoffman brought to the part. There’s a cartoonishness to the performance that McGrath and costumers Kurt and Bart seem to accentuate rather than tone down.

And yet it’s not the surface quality of Jones’s turn, or the comedic exaggeration, that ultimately makes “Infamous” a distant also-ran to “Capote.” It’s McGrath’s decision to ramp up the intensity–and the closeness–of the relationship that develops between Capote and killer Perry Smith (Daniel Craig). What Miller treated with a enigmatic hand, McGrath makes explicit, not only in the dialogue between the two men, which takes on a more than faintly melodramatic air, but in one miscalculated scene, when an angry Smith manhandles Capote in a way that turns into something sexual. It simply isn’t a convincing moment.

That’s partially the fault of the writing and direction, but it also comes from the fact that Craig seems badly cast as Smith. The role was played, to indelible effect, by Robert Blake in Richard Brooks’s 1967 film of “In Cold Blood.” But Craig, the future James Bond, with hair darkened and slicked back, is simply wrong for the part, tight-lipped and stiff in a way more suggestive of Craig’s discomfort with the role rather than Smith’s attitude of mingled arrogance and fear.

If this central relationship doesn’t work, some of the others in the film do. Jones and Sandra Bullock, playing Harper Lee, capture the affectionate yet sometimes tense coupling of the two writers well (it’s surely one of Bullock’s best performances), even if they don’t efface memories of Hoffman and Catherine Keener. And the likable Jeff Daniels plays well off Jones as Alvin Dewey, the small-town police detective who develops a curious bond with Capote, even if McGrath, once again, has a tendency to emphasize the incongruity of the flamboyant writer and the Kansas setting with a rather heavy comic hand. But he’s even less successful situating Capote within his New York circle. The East Coast scenes with recognizable faces playing celebrities come across as catty dress-up sessions, with Peter Bogdanovich (as Bennett Cerf), Hope Davis (as Slim Keith), Isabella Rossellini (as Marella Angelli), Juliet Stevenson (as Diana Vreeland), and Sigourney Weaver (as Babe Paley) essentially camping it up as famous people; and they’re incapable of selling the direct-to-the-camera interview segments McGrath has inserted for them to talk about Capote–a device that’s both moldy and intrusive. Better is an opening credits segment in which Gwyneth Paltrow plays an emotionally fragile nightclub singer called Kitty Dean, although her song–“What Is This Thing Called Love?”–is altogether too obvious a commentary on the relationship that Capote and Smith will eventually share.

“Infamous” works hard to capture a period feel, and it does quite well on what was probably a modest budget, especially in the Kansas scenes (Judy Becker was production designer and Laura Ballinger Gardner the art director); and the flashbacks to the killing of the Cutter family are effectively shot. (One detail in the Cutter house raises a question, though–the presence of a crucifix on a bedroom wall. Isn’t that a Catholic touch in what was a Methodist home? Perhaps set decorator Gene Serdena could explain.) And Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography catches some moments with real beauty. But the look of the film never achieves the quiet authenticity of the earlier film. (And Rachel Portman’s score, unhappily, is nondescript. Perhaps she should cut back on the number of commissions she accepts.)

But it’s the substance, not the surface, of “Infamous” that disappoints. Even without “Capote” as a point of reference, McGrath’s take on the story would have been problematic. With Miller’s film still fresh in the memory, however, it pales into insignificance.