What can I say about director Paul Osborne’s latest thriller, Cruel Hearts? Seriously, what can I say? The plot is wound so tightly that I fear any attempt to summarize it would reveal a spoiler.

Osborne has become a favorite at the Phoenix Film Festival with his dramas Ten ’til Noon (2006) and Favor (2013) – along with Official Rejection (2009), his hilarious documentary about the film-festival circuit.

Actor Patrick Day was an ominous presence as Marvin in Favor, growing slowly from a dim bulb into an insatiable monster, kind of like the carnivorous plant in Little Shop of Horrors. (“Feed me, Seymour!”) Day is a different kind of scary in Cruel Hearts, portraying Burt Walker, a mid-level mobster who is a grenade waiting to go off.

Playing with the pin is Guy (Alev Ayden), a stranger who approaches Burt in the bar he uses to launder money for a criminal syndicate known only as The Organization. Guy claims to have slept with Burt’s wife (Bonnie Root), not knowing who she was. He is confessing, he says, because he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.

Osborne employs the technique of presenting the same scenes again and again from the perspectives of different characters. This keeps audiences guessing about the characters and their motivations until he decides to reveal things little by little.

Indeed, certain scenes seem to exist solely to provide that exposition.

In one, a mob enforcer named Grimmer (Eddie Jemison from Ocean’s Eleven and iZombie) and his partner, Adele (Marion Kerr), bring a man who stole from The Organization to Burt’s bar for interrogation, much to Burt’s annoyance. This sequence establishes Burt’s explosive anger and casts doubt on Burt’s status within The Organization. Kerr does such a great job bringing to life her sartorially obsessed female goon that it’s a shame Adele doesn’t appear again in Cruel Hearts.

Then there are late-night diner scenes between Guy and a sassy waitress named Grace (Melora Hardin from The Bold Type and Transparent). These scenes reveal, bit by bit: the stranger’s role; the fact that he loses sleep over it; and that he can be a good guy when he’s off the clock. But again, Hardin does such a great job giving life to Grace that she’s another character begging for more script.

The film’s central drama, however, is among Burt, his wife and the stranger.

“The whole thing is an allegory for marriage,” Osborne said in a post-screening Q&A at the Phoenix Film Festival. “The idea is that people who are married don’t communicate all of the unspoken resentments, suspicions and doubts, and all of this crap builds up. So the stranger is the physical manifestation of the crap.”

Cruel Hearts has finished its showings at the Phoenix Film Festival, but Favor will screen Tuesday at 2:40 p,m., part of a retro showcase of past PFF favorites. The film won the Best Screenplay award at the 2013 festival.

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Stuart J. Robinson practices writing, editing, media relations and social media through his business, Phoenix-based Lightbulb Communications.

Tags: Alev Ayden, Bonnie Root, Cruel Hearts, Eddie Jemison, Favor, Marion Kerr, Melora Hardin, Patrick Day, Paul Osborne, Phoenix Film Festival