When it comes to playing bad guys, Pierce Brosnan – my personal favorite 007 actor and shut up all you old-fogy Sean Connery fans – is not the first name that brings to mind. Yet he slips into the mold quite well in this R-rated thriller. The story focuses around a couple who are taken hostage in their own car by a fellow whose motives for wanting to control them – and destroy their lives – are initially murky.

The couple in question, played by Maria Bello and Gerard Butler, seem like the perfect upper-middle class, affluent Chicago couple, with a seemingly idyllic life that probably includes vacationing at a Hilton Head rental. As in any good Hitchcockian thriller, however, all is not as it seems. Their abductor seems to know both of them quite well and seems to have a personal vendetta he is pursuing, but even those preconceived notions will be challenged by the end of the twist-filled plot that offers plenty of entertaining, keep-em-guessing head-fakes before the big reveal.

One of the aspects of this thriller that pleased both my wife and me is that despite the R rating, there’s very little by way of course language and although there is plenty of implied and threatened violence, there’s not much in the way of actual violence. That makes for good suspense, since the threat of violence is always more tension-inducing than the actual act itself. As Hitchcock once said, you can show the audience a bomb ticking under a table that the hero is unaware of, and give them a thrill as the seconds tick down… but you can’t actually explode the bomb and kill the hero, or the audience will hate you.

Such thriller mathematics is understood and at play in Shattered, which turns out to be a surprisingly strong performance by Maria Bello. Bello, who probably will remind you of several sitcom actresses even though she’s never been in one, has been on a hot streak since appearing in A History of Violence back in 2005. Since then, she’s been toughening up her image in a real Diane Lane / Linda Fiorentino kind of way; not as young as she once was, Bello is staying relevant in a youth-obsessed Hollywood culture by taking rougher roles that highlight her pure acting ability rather than her feminine charms. She’s come a long way since her Coyote Ugly days.

Shattered is a movie that ought to cement Bello alongside Lane and Fiorentino in that regard, delivering impressive acting chops in this role that stands side-by-side with her work in A History of Violence. The film was quiet at the box office but is one of those that could flourish on DVD as word of mouth spreads about the quality of the film.

The special features are slim but substantive, providing only a couple featurettes and a slim selection of alternate and deleted scenes. There is a director and writer’s commentary track for the film, but it would have been far more intriguing if the main three actors, Brosnan, Bello and Butler, had also been involved. Still, not a bad package for a film that didn’t make a big splash on the big screen.