“The term noir gets applied to all manner of candy-assed crap these days (Michael Mann's Collateral? Pfftt!), so a thriller as uncompromisingly dark as Nowhere Man presents a welcome opportunity to reset the benchmark.

The plot is a sick riff on the 1950 noir classic D.O.A., in which Edmond O'Brien learns he's dying of a slow-working poison and races against the clock to solve and avenge his own murder. Nowhere Man’s protagonist Conrad Kane (Rodrick) has to find his fiancée, Debbie (Rochon), who's cut off his dick and gone on the lam with it. If he tracks her down within 24 hours, there's still some chance the severed member can be reattached-assuming she's telling the truth about keeping it on ice. Conrad and Debbie fall out after someone anonymously mails him a porn tape she forgot to tell him she once made. Conrad takes the news badly, directing a torrent of emotional abuse at his tearful fiancée that culminates in a heartless act of sexual humiliation. Debbie strikes back with a pair of shears, then adds insult to injury by fleeing into the arms of Daddy Mac, her appallingly well-endowed porn costar (persuasively played by Olivier, an appallingly well-endowed porn star).

It may sound like a John Wayne Bobbitt joke 12 years overdue, but indie auteur McCann (Desolation Angels, Revolution #9) knows exactly what he's doing, eliciting scalding, tragic performances from his little-known players while maintaining an assured 80/20 balance between straight-faced thriller and pitch-black surrealist farce.

-- Cliff Doerksen, Time Out Chicago