Simran Hans

Sometimes there is pleasure to be found in brainless action, but the extended video game-style finale left me furious and fatigued.

This bland, sombre love story from the director of The Lunchbox (2013) lacks that film’s flavour.

With Neeson well within the confines of his comfort zone, tailed by corrupt cops and diving out of hotel windows, the film should be better. Yet it drags.

For a film about magic, there’s little sparkle to spare.

It’s unfortunate that caricatured villains lessen the impact of the film’s upward punch.

I can’t shake the inkling that it would’ve worked better as straight documentary.

Tension is frequently punctured by clunky dialogue.

Enitan’s trauma is revelled in but for what? Few new truths are learned here. A rushed, redemptive montage towards the film’s end is presented as ickily aspirational.

The frenetic pacing, intended to sweep the audience along, can’t draw attention away from Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh’s platitude-riddled script.

Simon Kinberg’s film feels aggressively focus-grouped for the girl-boss crowd.

James’s natural charisma should allow the film to soar but he’s bogged down by an avalanche of distracting cameos, from Gremlins to Game of Thrones.

Maslany is magnetic, her coiled fury and sexual energy threatening to erupt as her placid partner plods along beside her.

The impish Leslie Mann is well cast as his dead wife, Elvira, who provides a jolt of creative inspiration. Judi Dench’s screechy caricature of psychic Madame Arcati is less winning.

Mimicking the relapse-recovery cycle of addiction, the film’s timeline moves in unsatisfying narrative circles that stall the already shallow stakes.

The film’s critiques are unimaginative, tutting at how territories attack first in order to consolidate power, as well as the spectacle of war itself, bystanders crowding the balconies of the ship-like city, shrieking as guns and lasers fire at the wastelands below.

The film’s second half suffers from frantic pacing and overstuffed action sequences.

The film isn’t totally unenjoyable, but it isn’t particularly coherent either.

Though Brühl is an affable and witty screen presence, there’s no getting round the fact that the film is a vanity project.

As a genre exercise, it mostly works; set pieces are tense, explosive and pleasingly gory, littered with flying scraps of metal and meat. Davis in particular is an authoritative presence. As a sequel, it’s baldly opportunistic, grab-bagging contemporary political issues (reproductive justice; undocumented migrants) in a transparent attempt to justify its cultural relevance.

The camera’s canted angles and shaky closeups convulse with feeling that the actors can’t seem to summon. Ensemble dance sequences convey neither emotion nor information (except that the felines each have 10 fully articulated human toes). The film is rated U, but many of its uncanny images are sure to haunt viewers for generations.

These self-consciously upbeat moments clash horribly with the wider redemption narrative.

The ugly visual effects are outdone only by the sound design, which is relentlessly loud and thunderingly tedious. Verbal exchanges between the humans are devoid of wit and barely functional in communicating the story.

The whole thing feels strangely pedestrian, unable to capture or channel Bowie’s maverick spirit.