Eight years on, Dr Alex Beck is still devastated by wife Margot's murder at the hands of a serial killer.

Now, days before what would have been their anniversary, Beck receives an anonymous e-mail. When he clicks on the link he sees – filmed in real time – a woman's face. Margot.

At the same time, the discovery of two bodies leads the police to re-open Margot's murder investigation – with Beck as prime suspect.

Now Alex finds himself desperately following a cryptic trail that could lead him to Margot, while evading both the police and dark riders equally determined to keep buried the secrets of the past.

This second feature from Guillame Canet (Mon Idole) is a hybrid affair – a French film set in Paris but adapted from a best-selling novel by US crime writer Harlan Coben and originally set in New York.

French audiences have embraced the adaptation, resulting in one of the country's most successful films of the year, as well as a clutch of awards.

Perhaps it's the subtle blend of genres that first intrigued director Canet which has also enticed French viewers. This is a beautifully shot and scored love story framing a somewhat more mundane interruption of violence and intrigue. Cultural snobbery it may be, but the more classically French opening seems marred by the Hollywood-like intrusion which slices it in half.

The action/thriller part of the film offers little that's new to the seasoned popcorn palate. Racing through the city, acquiring street smarts he never knew he had, François Cluzet (Prėt-â-Porter) does a passable Harrison Ford (think The Fugitive).

And, when it comes to the hoods-with-a-heart that become unlikely allies to the refined paediatrician, they are fuzzy felt lift-offs straight from modern urban Americana: 'thug niggas' with off-roaders and few qualms in gunning down the 'real' bad guys. There's little time for all but the most cursory nod to the recent socio-racial tensions which have erupted across Paris.

If there's one thing which Tell No One offers with a candour often side-stepped by mainstream Hollywood, it's violence against women. There's no squeamishness here.

Given such thriller plots are as common as casting couches in Hollywood the celluloid cultural clash between the two threads of the film does jar somewhat.

After an emotive opening, the pace of the thriller proper seems clunky and slow, while the obfuscation of characters and motives becomes wearying after a while. Having laboured over themes of love and grief in the first act, the third act seems implausible, rushed and overwrought.

The saying goes that a writer shouldn't show a gun in the first act if it then isn't fired in the last. Here it's more like a late and unexpected arsenal, as characters rush out from the wings too late in the day for us to care about them or their revelations.

One of the film's strengths is in attention to detail. The score, for one, which was improvised – pretty much in single takes – by artist –M-, Matthieu Chedid. His bluesy guitar riffs and lyrics add to the melancholic feeling of loss Cluzet brings to his portrayal of Beck.

The leads are likeable, with British actress Kristin Scott-Thomas (Gosford Park) particularly interesting on-screen.

Equally interesting will be to see how audiences outside France take to Tell No One. Subtitles are likely to remain an issue, as far as cinema screenings go at least. Commercial hope may actually lie in the clunky, clichéd middle act, which could prove a saving grace for those who believe cinema was made for such fayre. For culture snobs and sensitive types, well, it's still a French film, so they're bound to love it, too.