A Man in Uniform by Stephen Farber Another eccentric is at the center of a new dramatic feature, A Man in Uniform, from Toronto-based writer-director David Wellington. (The original title I Love a Man in Uniform, was more piquant.) This is a chilling, sometimes mordantly comic exploration of a disturbed loner, played to perfection by Tom McCamus. The film owes something to Taxi Driver and to other gritty American urban thrillers, but it has a creepy intensity all its own. The main character, Henry Adler, is a meek bank teller who moonlights as an actor. When he wins a part as a cop in a schlocky TV series called "Crimewave," he takes his costume home with him and tries to use it to transform his self-image. The film cleverly blurs the line between pop fiction and real life, slyly suggesting how movies and trash TV have overwhelmed our sensibilities. A real bank robbery that Henry experiences plays like a scene from a movie; the female bank robber even dresses like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. More importantly, A Man in Uniform is an acute psychological study of a man consumed by fantasy, unable to make his real life match his media-fed dreams. When Henry puts on his uniform and tries to play the cop on the city's mean streets, he's completely ineffectual. Only when he's acting before the cameras can he make a convincing tough guy. He also tries to initiate a romance with the actress who plays his love interest on television. But when she rebuffs him, something snaps in Henry, and he begins a disorienting downward spiral, which is capped when he meets a real-life cop who is even more psychotic than he is. The film is sometimes overly arty, but the performances are excellent, and its comment about a misfit hypnotized by make-believe mayhem is subtle and slyly discerning. The most bracing thing about the film is that it's completely uncompromising; it doesn't provide even a whiff of uplift as it chronicles Henry's gradual descent into chaos. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum.