There's no rule that a movie must have countless characters and locations. Louis Malle made a satisfying three-course meal out of "My Dinner With Andre," and desk-bound storyteller Spalding Gray wove war, fame and neurosis into a dense tapestry in "Swimming to Cambodia."

The gold standard of such chamber pieces is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," in which a college-town cocktail party turns toxic.

Like "Virginia Woolf," "Carnage" is a four-person pressure cooker copied from a Broadway blueprint, but it's considerably lighter.

Roman Polanski's adaptation of the Yasmina Reza comedy could be called "Who's Afraid of a Playground Bully?" Two prosperous Brooklyn couples — Michael and Penny Longstreet (John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster) and Alan and Nancy Cowan (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) — have convened in the Longstreet's lovely apartment because young Zach Cowan struck Ethan Longstreet while armed with a stick.

"Armed?" asks Alan while Penny types a deposition about dental-work restitution for her son. Perhaps, he suggests, a less loaded word would be "carrying."

Alan is a corporate lawyer, so his linguistic counterpunches are predictable; but over the course of the 80-minute meeting, each of the other parents is revealed to be a schemer, too, angling for advantage behind fake smiles. Alan is just the most overtly hostile to the peacemaking process, as he freely admits that his son is a "maniac" and rules by "the god of carnage."

Liberal author Penny is not-so-quietly appalled by Alan's attitude, but Michael, who sells decorative plumbing fixtures, becomes grateful for the chance to shed the pleasantries. As the afternoon devolves into shouting, he uncorks the good Scotch and sides with his fellow caveman.

Investment banker Nancy is neutral to a fault, until something in the apple cobbler unleashes her inner turmoil — all over Penny's coffee-table books.

If we grant that "Carnage" is a low-impact exercise in stripping away the social veneer, it's nonetheless brisk and enjoyable. Between them, the four actors and the director have five Oscars and a dozen other nominations, so we're in seasoned hands. Waltz, the Austrian actor who won an Academy Award for "Inglourious Basterds," continues to find sly shadings of malice, and it's a treat to see Foster in comedic mode.

Ditto for Polanski, the Holocaust survivor, widower and fugitive who plumbed paranoia in "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist." When a man whose wife was killed by cultists invites us to laugh at life's absurdities, the particulars are almost incidental.

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"Carnage"

Three stars (out of four) • Rating R • Run time 1:19 • Content Strong language