Leslie Felperin

Indeed, it is not clear how interested director Rudy Valdez is in Santana, or whether he is just doing this gig as a means to an end.

This one has all the Norwegian drama of Yuletide in one tidy package, yes sir.

The execution is dire, with cliche-riddled dialogue as cheesy as a packet of Kraft Singles, stodgy pacing, poorly developed characters and shonky acting.

The film is to its credit much more interested in psychology rather than tech, and the fine lines between avarice, rage and impotence that make the capitalist world go round.

There’s a bit of soft-core humping and salty talk to break up the tedium, a phenomenon that’s fast disappearing from most mainstream films. The ripe naffness on show makes it somehow entertaining, especially as you can tell the film knows it’s naff.

While Sporrer in the lead role is fairly credible, a lot of the line readings by the rest of the cast are stilted in a way that a more experienced or native speaker would have picked up on. The result is that all the other characters except Amanda sound as if they’re in a radio play rather than an actual film.

Cue group hugs and sappy music as the credits roll.

If only the film were a little bit smarter and less predictable, it might have had a chance of becoming a cult classic.

The moral maths seem calculated in advance to ensure a by-numbers outcome, but it’s an absorbing puzzle while it lasts.

And in terms of docs about people with disabilities, this one is pretty honest about the mental anguish of losing mobility and – in a sideways fashion – addresses how such a change particularly affects men like Ed and Ben, hyper-masculine dudes whose identities are tied to their physical abilities.

The suspense-building and denouement are adequate enough, but what makes this more interesting is how director Rodger Griffiths weaves in a subtle dissection of how abuse can damage families in different ways.

The fight sequences are lethargic and feature a lot of extras waiting patiently for their cue to fall over dead. The Maltese architecture remains as lovely as ever; the dialogue is, however, shockingly bad.

Sonomura was the action director for three Baby Assassins features, which might explain that this, his third gig as a main director, feels more weighted towards scenes that showcase fisticuffs and fancy fight choreography rather than character development and emotional nuance.

As visual wallpaper it’s serviceable enough, providing a constant backbeat of blam-blam gunshots and explosions, mostly at night.

The subject matter alone could be enough to trigger geysers of tears in viewers, but what makes Le Fanu’s direction especially impressive is its lack of sentimentality. Instead, she focuses on daily rituals — the little murmurs of gratitude and kindness, and the sense of exhaustion that stretches out for hours, days and weeks as one waits for someone to die.

The stunts are duly impressive and filmed with vim, but the party apparatchiks would probably be happy with how thuddingly sentimental the film is, and how conservative it is about family values.

Here is a cheap-ass knockoff of Ocean’s Eleven starring John Travolta that makes the Soderbergh film look like something by Andrei Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman.

One might be tempted to describe West as rocking her huge natural hairdo, but rocking doesn’t do justice to its glorious volume; it is practically a supporting character in its own right, and one that calls to black heroines of yore, such as Pam Grier’s Foxy Brown and Tamara Dobson’s Cleopatra Jones back in the 1970s. Furthermore West has a nice way with a quip and has presence to spare, so while the script doesn’t exactly stretch her acting range, she holds the screen.

At least the makeup and the gore effects are competently executed, making the ensemble look like blood smeared meat-puppets on a rampage.

The film is at its best when it homes in on the literary criticism – bringing in articulate readers of the text such as novelist Jay McInerney, who details the effort that went into making it look thrown together in a matter of weeks.

More persuasive is the testimony from the half dozen men we meet, who bravely discuss their pain and distress while the cameras roll.

A syrupy stream of EDM-style pop in assorted languages fills in the spaces where people aren’t talking, but ultimately it’s all too bland and banal to even be offensive or annoying.

One could list all the film’s shortcomings, but that would be like pulling wings off a fairly harmless moth.

Blades of the Guardians offers a duly impressive spectacle, chock-full of epic set-pieces that lean more on physical effects than CGI, and of course lashings of exquisitely choreographed fight scenes mostly using – as the title suggests – swords.

It’s not a deep work, but it’s relentlessly fun if you’re not squeamish, or indeed sentimental about animals getting killed in the opening minutes.

It’s hard to outline what makes this work interesting without spoiling it, but let’s just say that as a satire it has helicopter parenting, sinister medical innovation to extend lifespan, and our obsession with youth and beauty in its sights. It’s a shame the final chapters don’t quite coalesce these fertile themes in more satisfactory fashion, and the film just ties everything up with some cursory violence.

For all its cack-handedness, there’s some effort here to grapple with issues around institutional and personal guilt and the wrongs done to young people that might turn them into smirking, giggling serial killers … or mass murderers, depending on how you define the term.