David Lansbury, Ernie Hudson, Martin Sheen and Jordan Bane. Next showing at the Little Theatre, Monday at 8.45 p.m.

`A Stranger in the Kingdom' is one of those movies that leaves you wondering what could have been. It promises, after all, all the elements of a compelling, character-driven story; but characterisation -- or the lack thereof -- proves to be this film's undoing.

From producer-director Jay Craven and based on the novel by Howard Frank Mosher, `A Stranger in the Kingdom' attempts to lay bare life and change in the sleepy Vermont backwater of Kingdom Common.

The year is 1952, and the place, set amid New England's pastoral splendour, appears to be long on lunatics and short on just about everything else -- save classic cars, guns, reprobates and booze.

At the centre of it all frolic the clan Kinneson: Brothers Resolved (a perpetual drunk played by Bill Raymond), Welcome (John Grisemer), and a collection of cousins too vast to comprehend -- save Charlie -- a local lawyer who seems anything but.

As the film opens, the Kingdom appears to be comfortable in its overage adolescence -- a town content in its isolation. No-one seems particularly perturbed, for instance, when Resolved wheels into town as a rifle-toting Martian and holds up the bank. He's a local boy after all. Or as Sheriff White (George Dickerson) would explain later: "Resolved's awful strange. But we know Resolved.'' Storm clouds inevitably cast a shadow over the Kingdom with the arrival of the town's new black preacher (Walter Andrews played by Ernie Hudson) and his son, Nathan.

They are swiftly followed by a young Quebecoise, Claire LaRiviere, (Jordan Bane), who has been lured to the Kingdom under false pretences by none other than lawyer -- cousin Charlie, acting for Resolved.

`A Stranger in the Kingdom' aspires to be a story of humankind's eternal battle for tolerance -- of one confronting the other -- be it racially or culturally. But it doesn't quite make the grade.

Not that director Craven has failed to assemble all the antagonistic elements; rather `A Stranger in the Kingdom' tries to do too much and ends up accomplishing little.

Shallow characterisation and fractured continuity seriously undermines what is in essence a great story.

Take cousin Charlie, (played by David Lansbury). One moment he's championing Resolved and the rest of the lunatic fringe, showing essentially nothing of redeemable quality: Don't forget he's the one who lures Claire to the Kingdom, and thus her ultimate fate.

Then the Charlie lurches ahead, swept into the film's central conflict - played out before the town court - with all the legal and moral fury of a country Perry Mason.

Nowhere however, is there a hint of this evolution. Cousin Charlie moves from being essentially a dislikable idiot to the Kingdom's conscience. Then there's Claire -- confusion personified on two levels. In one of the film's most memorable scenes, she arrives in the Kingdom on a bleak, rainy night.

Thanks to powerful imagery -- and the film IS beautifully shot -- you feel her isolation, her smallness, her singularity.

But suddenly, inexplicably, the film jumps ahead to Claire on some unknown stage, her fiddle in full stride and smile as wide as a country mile.

Claire's entire character is so crippled, she's either coming or going. One moment she's just one of the cousins, the next, she's alone, abused and lost -- just how I felt watching this film.

Not that `A Stranger in the Kingdom' is without its merits. Technical values are high and the cast boasts familiar faces -- notably Martin Sheen, Henry Gibson, and Tantoo Cardinal.

Yet even these big-screen veterans aren't enough to focus this film, and that's sad, because somewhere in `A Stranger in the Kingdom's' 122 minutes, there's a timeless story waiting to be told.

NEIL WARD MOVIE MPC