A secret test, hidden in the SAT, quantifies your ability to lie. Ace it, and you might find yourself vetted by the “D.E.B.S.” an elite organization of foxy spies. You have Discipline, Energy, Beauty, Strength! Not to mention D-cups, Elegance, Banality, and Sass. Please note, however, that Intelligence is not expected of the D.E.B.S.

Amy (Sara Foster) is the “perfect score,” the perfect blonde and perfectly bland. Together with Max (Meagan Good), the tough black girl; Janet (Jill Ritchie), the ditzy prude; and Dominique (Devon Aoki), the Euro nymph, they form the super-elite “A” squad of the D.E.B.S.

Trouble arrives in the seductive shape of Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster), an elusive criminal mastermind “exponentially more diabolical and ruthless than [her] male counterparts.” Notorious for her foiled attempt to wipe Australia off the face of the planet, Lucy has surfaced in Los Angeles for a mysterious rendezvous with a sexy Russian assassin.

As it happens, Lucy’s on a blind date. World domination aside, all she really wants is a girlfriend. Once the D.E.B.S. begin their hair-tossing, quip-making, slo-mo-skirt-twirling pursuit, Lucy falls for Amy. If not exactly gay, Amy is at least a crypto-L.U.G. (Lesbian Until Graduation). She finds her allegiances compromised by a growing affection for her ostensible foe.

“D.E.B.S.” comes on like a mash up of “The L Word,” “Mean Girls,” and “Austin Powers,” but there is one – and only one – scene that hums like it ought to. With the nimble, pad-footed funk of “Lovecats” on the soundtrack, Lucy prowls the perimeter of the D.E.B.S.’s sorority-compound. Thwarted by a blue-plaid force field, Lucy pulls out her Sidekick, activates its infrared scope, and tracks down the position of her beloved.

Everything comes together in this witty sequence. It’s satirical and sweet, clever and tender, sociologically precise (nowadays, Cupid’s arrow is a text message) and naturally sexy. Robert Smith’s romping, giddy lyrics are the ideal compliment to Lucy’s furtive erotic gambit, her heart-skipping elation: “We slip through the streets while everyone sleeps, getting bigger and sleeker and whiter and brighter.” But the scene comes early and it’s all downhill from there.

Writer-director Angela Robinson worked “D.E.B.S.” up into a low-budget feature after premiering a short version at Sundance – and it shows. Concentrated to its best 20 minutes, this high concept comedy might not give such low returns. Conflating nervous gay puppy love with espionage is a smart idea in theory: Both entail secrecy, tricky alliances, adventure, transgression, the risk of exposure. In practice, both themes lack credibility.

There’s one fun scene where the D.E.B.S., running late for class, can’t find their weaponry the way civilians might lose their cell phone or car keys. Otherwise, the spy stuff is a witless parody of “Charlie’s Angels” shtick. As for the romance, I’m not buying the vapid, clueless Amy as an object of desire for someone as sly and seductive as Ms. Brewster’s Lucy.

Then again, I’m not the target audience. And I suppose I’d rather see an action-comedy-romance aimed at teenage lesbians than the next dozen lazy rom-coms in the Hollywood pipeline – a good one, that is.

***

No doubt about it, Park Chan-Wook’s got a killer eye. There are no boring shots in his latest, “Old Boy,” a hip, hyperbolic revenge flick that nabbed the Grand Prize at Cannes. The images are tough and compact, edited for maximum impact. Some are digitally tweaked, but all of them are tweaking from one angst or another. Astringent, jittery, white-knuckle tense, they hit the screen with speed and sting; the movie is figuratively and literally a gauntlet of bitch-slaps.

At least one of these zingers has already become notorious. This is the infamous octopus scene, in which a man stuffs a piece of extremely fresh sashimi into his maw, bites down, and glares daggers into the camera as the poor creature’s tentacles thrash and suck at his cheeks. Pungent stuff to be sure, so how come “Old Boy” barely leaves an aftertaste?

While I’ve no doubts about Mr. Park’s eye, I have serious ones about some of his other faculties. “Old Boy” gives us one pummeling hour of stark, moody brutality followed by an hour of increasingly ludicrous and arbitrary exposition. The movie is vicious and vacant, like a ping-pong ball wrapped in barbed wire. By the end you’ll understand everything and care about nothing.

The movie opens in a fit of jump cuts as Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-Sik), drunk out of his mind, flails about a Seoul police station. Staggering into the rainy night, he blacks out under the eye of an ostentatious crane shot. On awakening, he finds himself imprisoned in a shabby, claustrophobic apartment.

He will spend the next 15 years trapped here with no company but a television, from which he learns he’s been framed for the murder of his wife and daughter. Subsisting on a diet of fried dumplings and rage, Dae-Su grows wild-eyed, sprouts a mangy shock of hair, hallucinates ants crawling from his veins, and prepares his body for revenge.

One morning he wakes up on the roof of a high-rise. Freedom! No: His prison has merely grown larger. Taunted and tricked by the man who imprisoned him, Oh Dae-Su rampages through Seoul seeking revenge. But first, lunch. (I hear the tako is fresh.) At the sushi bar, Dae-Su is served by cute chef Mido (Gang Hye-Jung), who inexplicably takes an interest in her wild-eyed customer. She brings him back to her place after he passes out on a plate of octopus pus.

A romance develops, as does a plan to solve the mystery of Dae-Su’s ordeal. The two sample every dumpling in town, searching for the exact plate that will make him upchuck in recognition. The tailing of a delivery dude leads Dae-Su to his first major discovery: An underground company that maintains a block of monitored cells to torture and contain their client’s enemies, no questions asked. Dae-Su wastes no time prying out the manager’s teeth with a hammer.

Plot complications involve an audiotape full of secrets and the identity of chat room users. There is a remarkably choreographed, hilariously interminable tracking shot in which Dae-Su maims several dozen thugs in spectacular fashion. Dae-Su’s puppet master, a young, dashing executive type (Yoo Ji-Tae) materializes, but keeps his neck by withholding an explanation for his dastardly scheme. Flashbacks begin to show the full contours of the maze.

It won’t do to carry a plot synopsis any further. There may be some pleasure in discovering for yourself the silly little monster at the heart of the labyrinth. For this viewer, though, the end effect was mounting indifference to the machinations of “Old Boy.” The film lifts a lot from Brian De Palma: the use of split screen and “deep-focus” matte shots; the cool, Olympian camera glides; the infernal engineering of a diabolical plot; the head-spinning yank of loose ends in the last reel. But the maestro of “Femme Fatale” succeeds, at his best, in dazzling rather than bamboozling his audience. Mr. Park’s climactic fireworks are all wet.