Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje stars as Babs Johnson (short for Babel, mind you), a one-time top cop in Philadelphia until he got himself caught up in a web of drug addiction and corruption that eventually led to an act so heinous that we are only informed of it via a gradually expanding flashback—in black-and-white, no less—running throughout the film proper. A year or so later, a newly sober Babs turns up in Atlantic City to work as a detective for the local police force in the hopes of reconnecting with ex-wife Savannah (Heather Graham) and their teenaged daughter Amy (Celeste O’Connor). This will prove to be a little more difficult to pull off than he thinks. Amy quite rightfully resents the fact that her father bailed on her for so long and now thinks he can get back into her good graces with such tokens as an ice cream cone or a fishing trip. As for Savannah, she is still bitter at her ex and is now romantically involved with a younger woman who is known only as Surfer Girl (Reyna de Courcy), who dreams of one day leaving the Garden State behind to head off to California to open her own surf shop.

While trying to mend fences in his personal life, Babs spends his professional hours trying to bring an end to the area’s thriving drug trade that is being run by local gangsters Jimmy Coconuts (Louis Mustillo) and Lollipop (Barry Markowitz). This also proves to be a little trickier than it seems because not only do the gangsters appear to be paying off the top cops in town, they also have Babs’ motormouth partner (Christopher McDonald) under their thumbs due to extensive gambling debts. To complicate matters even further, Babs discovers that Surfer Girl is also tied up in the local drug trade and has been courting danger by repeatedly shortchanging Jimmy and Lollipop in their dealings, a move that could end up putting Savannah and Amy in danger as well. Things quickly go sideways and when a dead body eventually turns up, all signs point to Babs as the killer. Oh yeah, while all of this is going on, a late-season hurricane is threatening to hit the area with unexpected and potentially metaphorical force.

“Wetlands” would clearly love to come across as a contemporary version of the classic film noirs that actors like the great Robert Mitchum used to crank out with offhand ease back in the day (though I seriously doubt that Mitchum would have ever consented to playing a character named Babs Johnson). Instead, the crime aspect of the story does not add up to much—those scenes feel oddly truncated (when the key murder finally occurs, the film has only about 15 minutes or so to wrap it up) and what we do see offers nothing in the way of surprise. (Even that traumatic flashback, once finally revealed in full, will not raise too many eyebrows.) The more personal stuff doesn’t work either because we never get any sense of the struggles Babs must be going through in trying to keep it together and show his ex-wife and daughter that he is once again worthy of their trust. Instead of fleshing out either of these areas, the screenplay instead wastes time on such dramatically pointless elements as Babs’ clandestine relationship with his partner’s wife (Jennifer Ehle), a newscaster who constantly pops diet pills in the hopes that she will not be replaced by someone younger, prettier and thinner. Then there is that hurricane, which is hyped to be a key element of the story but then peters out without making much of an impact. After this effort and Brian De Palma’s otherwise great 1998 film “Snake Eyes,” perhaps filmmakers should just agree that thrillers about murder and corruption in Atlantic City and hurricane subplots just do not mix.