Terrence Howard and Esai Morales play Little Rock cops with dark secrets investigating a series of grisly murders.

MPA Rating: R. Running time: 103 MIN.

by Joe Leyton

New Orleans natives may be slightly disappointed to find that a movie titled “Crescent City” — long a popular nickname for the storied Louisiana metropolis — actually is set in and around Little Rock, Ark. On the other hand, they might be happy to find that their hometown is not represented at all in this overplotted and instantly disposable drama, a bland gumbo of serial killer tropes, internal affairs investigation, Satanic sex addicts and buddy-cop shoot-’em-up stuff. The movie opens day-and-date Aug. 16 in limited theatrical runs as well as on digital platforms, but it’s really best suited for home screen perusing — just so viewers can intermittently hit pause and ask one another, “Wait, what the hell was that all about?”

Terrence Howard and Esai Morales struggle mightily — and do more for the movie than it ever does for them — while attempting to impose some degree of plausibility (or at least coherence) on the convoluted and often contradictory goings-on. They do yeoman work here as veteran cops based in Little Rock, a location dutifully and repeatedly identified by extended exterior shots of the Little Rock Police Department.

Howard plays Brian Sutter, a churchgoing family man haunted by flashbacks to the violent end of an ill-fated drug bust, while Morales is cast as Luke Carson, Brian’s longtime partner, a loose cannon whose interrogation tactics elicit this not-entirely-disapproving appraisal from their captain: “Jesus Christ! This guy thinks he’s Dirty Harry.”

That captain (Alec Baldin, picking up an easy paycheck) grows so impatient with their progress in tracking down a serial killer terrorizing the community that he adds a new member to their team: Jaclyn Waters (Nicky Whelan, as credible as she can be under the circumatances), a beautiful Australian-born cop identified as a recent transfer from Tulsa. Carson is instantly suspicious, if not downright hostile, and not just because Waters proves totally immune to his swaggering come-ons. But Sutter is more accepting — very accepting, as a matter of fact — for reasons that have little to do with their ongoing investigation.

One thing leads to another as director RJ Collins (“American Sicario”) and screenwriter Rich Ronat (“Grand Isle”) pile one twist after another in a manner that strongly suggests scads of day-to-day rewrites. The plot has something to do with sexual escapades connected to Sutter’s neighborhood church, something else to do with an extramarital affair involving two characters who periodically appear to be prime suspects, and still something else to do with a traumatized youngster who grew up to be a brilliantly disguised executioner of unfaithful husbands and other fornicators.

For a while, it’s mildly intriguing to see how “Crescent City” alternates among Sutter, Carson and Waters while dropping hints that one (or maybe none) is a psycho killer, and the actors toss possible motives back and forth like they’re handling a hot potato. Unfortunately, everything leads to two absurdly contrived twists, and a coda that plays like it was tacked on after preview audiences objected to the apparent quietus of a major character.

Blockbuster store shelves used to be overburdened to the point of near-collapse with unremarkable trifles such as this.