Whatever little dose of action is present is rendered in cheap looking CGI, which hammers the final nail in the coffin. It remains to be seen if a third instalment arrives next year because as a second film in a series, ‘Insurgent’ is a dud.

There is a barrage of twists to surprise you, but even those are so lame you wish you had been in the film and successfully fooled everyone in it. Smith, who is generally so likable, does little to salvage the scrappy material, as if still reeling from the aftershock of ‘After Earth’.

It all leads up to a predictable ending full of groan-worthy loud and noisy events, and by the time it’s over all you can do is head over to the nearest sushi restaurant to forget whatever you just saw.

Love, Rosie is as stock and clichéd as they come. It neither surprises nor disappoints, it just arrives and leaves without making you feel anything. It is a zombie of a movie, but at best it is harmless and at worst humourless. One fascinating aspect of the movie is how Lilly Collins, a reasonably talented actress, continues to choose turkeys. Hugh Grant, however, would raise an eyebrow at Claflin’s dialogue delivery, if only the latter was as funny as the former.

The strange thing is, there is a lot of talking in the movie, as if the filmmakers want us to invest in the characters. As a result, there are only three action scenes in the film, and it becomes a real slog to sit through 80 minutes of boring characters blabbering for just 10 minutes of a** kicking. On the bright side, a couple of stunts are in slo mo, probably a first for Statham.

Sadly, the majority of the film is too serious to be campy and not campy enough to be fun, and neither bad enough to be a recommendation.

If you’re looking for a good swords and sandals epic with mystical creatures, you’ll have to look elsewhere because this one is a turkey.

Strangely the director David Koepp has made good films in the past – like ‘Premium Rush’ and ‘Ghost Town’, the latter especially worked as a comedy because of the charming cast and the genuinely great lines, and also the restrained nature of it. If only he’d spent more time writing good jokes instead of focusing on Depp’s star power to propel the film forward. Much like their previous collaboration ‘Secret Window’, this one is a turkey that’ll only be remembered for its legendarily small haul at the box office.

This movie has the same unmistakable stench of disappointment and the waft of simplistic tripe that his previous movie ‘The Fifth Estate’ had. The same can also be said about director Morten Tyldum who showed so much promise in the Norwegian film ‘Headhunters’ and sold out so easily to the comforts of Hollywood.

Kyle is presented as an uber hero on the run from an uber (also sniper) villain, and it turns into a standard issue thriller, in fact a lesser version of ‘The Green Zone’, rather than the epic biopic you expect it to be. And if you’re looking for some gunplay action in a war thriller, ‘American Sniper’ doesn’t even achieve anything substantial on that front.