DEEP CRIMSON

DEEP CRIMSON Regina Orozco, Daniel Gimenez Cacho (1996, New Yorker, 109 mins., unrated, subtitled) Though the title makes this movie sound like a Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster, it is anything but. Instead, Mexican director Arturo Ripstein has crafted a compassionate, bitingly funny retelling of the Lonely Hearts murders, the late-'40s crime spree that also inspired 1969's cult classic The Honeymoon Killers. In this version, a love-starved nurse falls for a toupeed con man who seduces and robs dispirited women like her. She tracks him down, however -- and devotes herself to him and his work. The flawless performances transform this thriller into a bloody valentine -- and the small screen renders the intensity so intimate that you become an implicit accomplice. A -- Caren Weiner Campbell