The level of internal anger in this flick obliterates all semblance of tone. Its wafting from giddy to gritty and back is unnerving, when not downright annoying.

Trading “Dueling Banjos” and gut-wrenching tension for haphazard plotting and an impromptu group singalong of an original folk tune, the results are disappointing on a number of levels.

The first-time filmmakers have little idea of pace, or imagery. Flatly lit, squarely staged, the scenes just plod on.

Director Matthew Ross does the near-impossible in Siberia: He turns a Keanu Reeves vehicle about sex, diamonds and the Russian mob into a dreary, endless slog.

Although the film hits all the time-marks of cinematic storytelling, the characters are broad, the music intrusive, and the dialogue made-for-TV-movie-esque. Just because the plot is swift does not mean the story compels.

It's a slick, beautifully designed movie with no soul and very little subtext. If Animal, always mercifully succinct, were doing this review, he might have written: 'Snore!' Then he'd stick his head in the toilet bowl and flush.

Spiral is a classic example of diffuse, all-over-the-map storytelling that avoids addressing its fraught subject in any fresh way; indeed, the core topic often disappears from the narrative altogether.

Why is she attracted to him? For that matter, why are we watching?

Should there not be enough travail or unhappiness in your life, this dud’s for you.

The bottom line is that Reprisal is an extremely silly movie doing its damnedest to look tough and gritty and clever, none of which it is. In fact, it’s both tediously formulaic and weirdly puzzling.

Anyone happening to come across Silencio should just as well move on: There’s nothing to see here.

From the get-go, Levinson makes every wrongheaded directorial decision imaginable in an apparent effort to make one loathe Assassination Nation—and his success in that regard proves this teensploitation schlock’s lone triumph.