Where this film, with some talented star wattage, completely flops is in living up to any of its exalted claims. Of showmanship, of storytelling, of being glorious, or of even “a million dreams”.

The film is all about Kenneth Branagh, his improvisations, and his morality take on a place and time far removed from the present.

The film’s smartest move is to recognise that Gal Gadot is the beating heart of this enterprise.

While promising to be a film about how much pressure mothers bring upon themselves over hosting the perfect Christmas for the family, it ends up about resolving mother-daughter conflicts through some very cliched characters.

Geostorm talks about a desert called ‘Registan’ in Afghanistan. Much, much later, the film ventures towards Mumbai as the world is collapsing only to show a distraught slum boy trying to save a street dog (where have you seen that before?).

Unfortunately, as told by this film, through Ali Fazal whose Abdul is as two-dimensional as a cardboard, with as little insight into the man transported into an alien world, Victoria and Abdul plays out exactly like a fantasy.

What is Jackie Chan doing in a film about the festering resentments in Northern Ireland, and a strained peace accord? Being a ‘Chinaman’.

A better film would have done something with the fact that the man Mitch and Hurley end up fighting is a product of the very system that sets people like them out into the world, to ask no questions and do all the bidding. However, American Assassin has little time for such ruminations…

What saves the film from collapsing is the acting by the children, who are effortlessly natural, whether they are just being boys or just being scared kids. As the object of their combined admiration, but with horrors of her own Lillis is both boldly aware and heartbreakingly fragile.

In parts, and very small parts, the banter between Samuel L Jackson and Ryan Reynolds, two indisputably charismatic actors, is funny and makes you forget a lot else that is going around them.