A lean, imposing figure with effortless charisma and sly, vaguely threatening masculinity, Vince Vaughn was precisely the wrong choice to play Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant's infamous Psycho remake. He was far too comfortable within his own skin to fake Anthony Perkins' self-effacing anxiety, but he's a good double for Robert Mitchum in Domestic Disturbance—a much more compelling facsimile, in fact, than the movie itself, which repackages Mitchum's Night Of The Hunter under a fittingly generic title. Running from a shady criminal past of his own, Vaughn doesn't have the legitimacy of the cloth, but he has the next best thing: a seal of approval from a coastal town's Chamber Of Commerce. Like Mitchum in Hunter, he marries a trusting woman (Teri Polo) on the rebound, filling a vacancy left by ex-husband John Travolta, but his oily charm is lost on stepson Matthew O'Leary, who instinctually knows to keep his distance. Vaughn's plans begin to unravel when the even-oilier Steve Buscemi shows up expecting his share of a racketeering scam, and O'Leary witnesses his treachery firsthand. But O'Leary has spoiled his credibility with petty misdemeanors and other divorce-inspired rebellion, so no one takes his word over his stepfather's except for Travolta, whose conviction is dismissed as resentment. Before the film turns him into a standard slasher bogeyman, Vaughn plays an interesting variation on Mitchum as filtered through the role played by Terry O'Quinn in the great 1987 thriller The Stepfather. As the perfect family man in search of the impossibly perfect family, O'Quinn is prone to incredible violence when the slightest thing goes awry, but Vaughn is more of a slow burner. If the circumstances were right and his past never caught up with him, it's possible to believe he could fit into a nice home and a stable, loving marriage. (Buscemi, in a movie-stealing performance, razzes his former cellmate for having a wedding-gift registry at Crate & Barrel.) But the moment Domestic Disturbance makes him less domestic and more disturbance, Vaughn loses any moral shading and just stalks around corners, doorways, and mirrors like a psychopath. At least he fares better than Travolta, who remains blandly noble even when he hits the bottle; the fact that his marriage was ruined by alcoholism might have added an compelling wrinkle to the story, but it's almost an afterthought. Director Harold Becker has carried off this sort of pulpy material before, most notably with the enjoyably ridiculous thrillers Sea Of Love and Malice, but this time he's undone by formula. When the screenplay backs him into a corner, he can only think to hack his way out.