“The truth is, good and bad are not so absolute,” the narrator of Nobel Son tells us. And maybe he’s got a point, at least when it comes to this movie.

Nobel Son is not good. Nor is it bad. It exists, instead, somewhere in the middle ground of interesting enough to hold one’s attention without actually providing any fresh, sensible or non-derivative developments.

Made in 2007, Nobel Son clearly owes its release to the modest success of writer/director Randall Miller’s charming Bottle Shock, about Napa Valley’s rise as a force in the world of wine. The characters, in particular the father/son vineyard owners who settled their differences in a boxing ring, didn’t always seem plausible, but the film — based on a true story — was never less than engaging.

Nobel Son, however, is poorly executed Guy Ritchie-via-Tarantino, a thriller that makes less sense the longer you watch it. Even the squinty-eyed perfection of Alan Rickman (who played a snobby British wine merchant in Bottle Shock) can’t make up for its increasingly ludicrous developments.

Rickman plays the boorish, sneering Eli Michaelson, who has just won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Eli is a complete ass to pretty much everyone whose path he crosses, including his colleagues and the students with whom he sleeps. Even his forensics specialist wife Sarah (Mary Steenburgen) tends to cringe when he’s around.

But mostly Eli is a jerk to his son Barkley (Bryan Greenberg), who has angered him by eschewing science to write his doctorate on cannibalism, a subject that — like call waiting, severed thumbs and Pat Benatar — is relied upon heavily for humor but rarely with much success.

The Michaelsons plan to travel to Stockholm, but Barkley manages to miss his plane, thanks to a hookup with a crazy, gorgeous young woman (Eliza Dushku, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). We know she’s nuts because: 1) She claims her name is “City Hall,” and 2) She leads him to a bed on the roof of her apartment surrounded by what appear to be pre-lit candles. Understandably, Barkley misses the plane to Sweden and instead gets himself kidnapped by a psychopath (Shawn Hatosy), who also nurses a big grudge against Eli.

So far so good. But as Nobel Son tries its hand at twists and turns, it veers off course and ends up trying too hard for surprise. The cast — which also includes Bottle Shock’s Bill Pullman as a detective with a yen for Sarah — is game enough, and severed thumbs are always a plus when you want an audience to squirm.

But Nobel Son isn’t as smart as it thinks it is. It’s just dumb fun, with the emphasis on dumb.

**

Nobel Son

Starring: Alan Rickman, Bryan Greenberg, Shawn Hatosy, Mary Steenburgen, Bill Pullman, Eliza Dushku.

Rated: R, contains violent, gruesome images; profanity, sexuality.