Michael Crichton has been criticized time and time again for writing elaborate science-fiction plots that are marred by shallow character development. Based on Danish writer Peter Høeg’s bestselling novel, Smilla’s Sense of Snow suffers from problems that are exactly opposite to Crichton’s. The movie takes complex characters and tosses them into an absurd sci-fi scenario that is preposterous at best.

As the cold-hearted Smilla Jaspersen, Julia Ormond plays one of modern fiction’s best female characters. Smilla is an intelligent woman who must deal with inner conflicts. She has trouble allowing outsiders into her life, but makes an exception for a young Inuit boy. Coming home one afternoon, Smilla discovers that he has fallen to his death from the roof of their apartment building. Using her knowledge of snow to analyze his footprints, Smilla discovers that what the police dismissed as an accident is really murder.

Although it does not match the brilliant characterization of the novel, the movie successfully captures the difficulty someone might have in trusting others when her only loves are mathematics and snow. While investigating the boy’s death, Smilla falls for a mechanic (Gabriel Byrne) who helps protect her.

“You sure have a rough mouth for such a gentle person,” the mechanic tells her.

“I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that only my mouth is rough,” Smilla responds. “I try to be rough all over.”

Smilla’s difficulty with accepting her own emotions is a welcome change from standard jump-in-bed movie heroines. Although she strikes me as a surprising pick for the role, Ormond does a wonderful job of playing the cold, detached Smilla. Byrne (The Usual Suspects) helps to complete a pair of lovers who remind us of couples from classics like Casablanca or Gone With the Wind, independent but drawn together by a powerful attraction. The way the characters handle betrayals and lies seems infinitely more interesting than the solution to the mystery, but the movie would be unfaithful to the book if it abandoned the inevitably lame conclusion.

As far as Smilla’s storyline is concerned, the film is a vast improvement over the novel. The movie carefully places clues to the solution in hopes that the book’s absurd sci-fi climax will not catch us entirely by surprise. Despite an impressive opening sequence in which a lone Eskimo fisherman tries to outrun an icy explosion, the scenes in Greenland seem completely out of place. It is nearly impossible to believe that the boy’s death is the key to an elaborate scientific cover-up that could redefine the world as we know it.

Though a dissatisfying mystery, the movie still manages to keep us interested in its characters. Smilla is a heroine I would like to see again in a sequel. She has the necessary qualities to be the type of sophisticated sleuth you might find in an Agatha Christie novel, plus she’s tough enough to stand up to her aggressors. Let’s just hope that Hollywood doesn’t abandon this heroine because of her disappointing first appearance.