Leaden, laden with effects, short on imagination.

The idea of pitting karate champion Norris against a virtually indestructible psychopath is intriguing, but the resulting confusion of clichés proves disappointingly incompetent.

Since this marks the directorial debut of Hollywood hack Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), there’s a heavy foot applied to the era-skipping leaps made by source novelist Mark Helprin.

One only hopes that Ruby Dee, Michael K. Williams and the late, great Pinetop Perkins were paid well for their wasted time.

In drag or out of it, the soft-spoken star has rarely been less convincing than when locking and loading from his home arsenal or dangling from a decaying Detroit edifice.

Too many digital effects ruin the spell of a tactile world of evil objects scheming your demise. But even a mediocre FD is better than more Jigsaw.

The paeans about national pride and brotherhood may be regional, but constant slow-motion battle scenes and squishy sentimentality are strictly wanna-be Tinseltown.

The film strives to cinematically reanimate that shabby underground lair; instead, it proves to be the most bastardized souvenir bauble of all.

There’s still too much flashback material here about apprentices and evil cops. But if you’ve ever raged at nameless, insensitive service people, you won’t mind seeing them strapped into a rotating turret, the shotgun cocking.

Munn has proved on TV that she has solid timing, but she does little here other than look pretty and, when the plot calls for it, outraged. As for the likable Schneider, the "All the Real Girls" actor demonstrates that he's better off as a straight man than as a physical comedian.

Can a single guitar riff tell you everything you need to know about a movie? The dreadful Kill Me Three Times, which has nothing to offer beyond some aerial looks at the white-and-turquoise beaches of Western Australia, opens with a power chord so cheesy and generic that it immediately identifies this story of amateur criminals as the charmless ’90s throwback that it is.

The results are often tasteless moments, like Hugh Jackman cackling over footage of an Australian aboriginal ritual scored to techno.

A risibly inadequate disaster movie.

An amiable and humorous fantasy-cum-Faery tale in the Gremlins mould... The whole thing is jogged along nicely by the cast (especially the excellent Moriarty, jigging around manically to his '60s records), and has exactly the right balance between child-like wonder and gentle self-parody.

Unbelievable tosh.

A relentlessly sadistic and worryingly amusing movie, which will entertain and offend in equal measure.

Teenagers are jerks (it’s a scientific fact) but if you have one as your protagonist, they need a redeeming quality or two.

It’s truly a milquetoast Scooby Snack for pet-friendly families who thrill to computer-generated mouth movements on real-life four-legged critters.

Take the last train to anywhere but here.

No viewer goes into this movie expecting John Cassavetes's "Husbands," least of all from soft-serve director Denis Dugan (You Don't Mess with the Zohan).

Smurftastic! Now where's that noose?

It's the wooden plotting and cornball sentimentality--and, most unpleasant of all, the full-frontal nudity of Jamie Kennedy--that truly make this AVN-themed fairy tale, ahem, hard to swallow

Give this literally and figuratively bloodless spooker a pass.

A curiously indigestible phenomenon, like being forced to eat five courses of avocado by an overbearing dinner-party host.

No amount of eccentric Americana (or slyly marginal inventiveness) can salvage this strangely lifeless - and largely laughless - gonzo comedy, which is doomed by a flimsy script, one-dimensional characterizations and distractingly inept child acting.

A standard extremist farce, lazily written and fumblingly directed.

A real mess.

After several tedious jump scares and boneheaded escape plans, a bag over your head won't seem like such a bad idea. Or the noose.