Harry Melling nails the most enjoyably offbeat performance of 2022 in 'The Pale Blue Eye'

“The Pale Blue Eye,” a new film on Netflix, boasts an outstanding cast, including Christian Bale, Gillian Anderson, Robert Duvall, Toby Jones and Timothy Spall.

They’re all really good in it.

And Harry Melling outshines them all in one of the more enjoyably offbeat performances of the year.

Scott Cooper’s film, based on the novel by Louis Bayard, is a murder mystery set at West Point in 1830, when the military academy was relatively new (it was founded in 1802). It’s important that the institution put its best foot forward.

Then one snowy night a cadet finds another hanging from a tree. This is bad enough. But the next day it’s discovered that while the dead cadet’s body lay in the morgue, his heart was cut out and taken.

Scary good:Jenna Ortega will make 'Wednesday,' an Addams Family spinoff, your favorite day

In addition to Bale, the cast includes Gillian Anderson, Timothy Spall and Toby Jones

Superintendent Thayer (Spall) turns to Augustus Landor (Bale), a hard-drinking detective who’s not taking cases — he has suffered tragedy, more than once — but whose reputation for solving difficult crimes is sterling.

Landor is observant, careful, patient, too much so for Thayer’s liking. A cadet who also enjoys drinking comes forward to Landor in a local pub (even though Landor agreed not to drink while on the case). The cadet, too, is observant. He knows some things, and he believes some things. He’s also extremely confident, speaking in florid language marinated in a Southern accent.

Cadet Poe is his name. Cadet Edgar Allan Poe.

Happy returns:'Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery' is the Daniel Craig-led frolic we need

A movie based on a book by an author who likes to play with historical figures

Bayard writes books that sometimes play with fictional and historic figures. “Mr. Timothy” is about a grown-up Tiny Tim from “A Christmas Carol,” for instance, who is no longer the “God bless us every one” kid; far from it.

As Landor and Poe investigate further, the case grows darker and darker. Clearly malevolent forces are at work.

Poe, who isn’t much of an Army man, but shows promise as a poet, becomes enamored with Lea Marquis (Lucy Boynton), the sickly daughter of Dr. Daniel Marquis (Jones), and sister of Artemus (Harry Lawtey), a cadet. She seems drawn to Poe, as well. Her mother (Anderson) is kind of flighty — Anderson is having a ball here — which befits the weird vibe that surrounds the family, and indeed, almost everyone with any connection to the case.

Duvall has a small part as a grizzled old man who is expert in the field of such nefarious doings. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays a barmaid who becomes both Landor’s lover and his eyes in the pub, where cadets sometimes go.

The story takes some flights of fancy that don’t always track. Cooper can’t resist heavy-handed bits like showing a raven — we get it, we get it — and he jumps around a bit with the narrative. At times it doesn’t make sense.

It will.

The best parts of the film are the scenes between Bale and Melling

What could have been a tidy resolution — well, however tidy a story about cadets who die and their hearts go missing can be — turns into something else. I’m still not sure I buy it, but I did enjoy watching it unfold.

Kudos also to cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, who makes everything look perfectly creepy, what with the fog and the snow and the general air of mysterious evil. Often when “Ozark” tinted everything blue, especially in the first couple of seasons, it seemed like an affectation (because it was). Here it seems appropriate.

But most of all I enjoyed watching Bale and Melling together. Poe wants to impress Landor, who after all is a famous detective, but he just can’t help himself. There’s a great scene where he goes to great lengths to explain the daylights out of something he’s figured out, and realizes when he’s done that Landor knew the answer all along. The look on Melling’s face — embarrassment but also anger — is priceless.

Bale, in these scenes, adopts a kind of bemusement. His Landor probably sees something of himself in the young writer. It’s not at all clear that, despite their closeness, Poe sees any of himself in Landor. In Melling’s portrayal he is a man apart, already on the road to something more grand, and ultimately, more tragic.

'The Pale Blue Eye' 4 stars

Director: Scott Cooper.

Cast: Christian Bale, Harry Melling, Gillian Anderson.

Rating: R for some violent content and bloody images.

How to watch: In theaters Dec. 23; streaming on Netflix Jan. 6.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

Subscribe to azcentral.com today. What are you waiting for?

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Christian Bale, Harry Melling bring 'The Pale Blue Eye' into focus