SOLACE

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Abbie Cornish
Writer: Sean Bailey
Director: Afonso Poyart

Baffled by a series of murders, veteran FBI Special Agent Joe Merriwether (Morgan) calls upon the services of friend and former colleague Dr John Clancy (Hopkins). Clancy's a psychic who's helped out the Bureau before and Merriwether hopes that the Doc's visions will be able to point them in the direction of the killer. This does not go down well with Merriwether's sceptical young partner Katherine Cowles (Cornish), who believes in honest-to-goodness sleuthing and psychological profiling. The twist here? It appears as though the killer's a psychic too and their powers far outweigh Clancy's...

Oh, where to begin with this piece of plodding, preposterous piffle? Apparently it started life as a sequel of sorts to Seven but even the shoddiest, never-to-be-seen offcuts from David Fincher's movie would be infinitely more watchable than the hundred and one minutes of total and unadulterated cobblers served up here. The premise could have been just about wacky enough to fly had it been made with zip and panache but what you end up getting is a glum, energy-sapping trudge from point A to point Z in the serial killer movie landscape.

For me, the major problem is the screenplay. Not to put too fine a point on it, it's absolutely dreadful. Every plot development, every line seems to have been generated by a computer into which the script of every serial killer flick - and possibly every cop thriller - has been fed. Hopkins' character doesn't want to be dragged back into investigating another serial killer case? Check. Something happens that makes Hopkins's character change his mind? Check. Main character(s) threatened by the bad guy? Check. Highly intelligent murderer with his own supply of literary quotes? Check. "Name" actor as the serial killer? Check. Confrontation between hero and killer where killer explains his motives? Check. Audience members walking out after about forty minutes? Check.

I wasn't one of those audience members who threw in the towel before Solace had even hit the halfway mark. More fool me, I stuck another hour of the bloody thing and it didn't improve one little bit. Yes, it does set up some potentially interesting moral dilemmas concerning exactly why the murderer is going about their gruesome business but again these ideas are torpedoed by the terrible, clunky dialogue which convinces not one iota and does nothing to draw in the audience.

Which brings me to the main trio of performances. Hopkins, Morgan and Cornish are pretty much on a hiding to nothing considering the ludicrous things this movie makes them say on a regular basis but Morgan manages to come out of it the least unscathed, giving his standard FBI agent/family man an innate likability. Cornish does what she can, having to play a second-tier Clarice Starling-alike who is inevitably put in danger come the excruciatingly dull climax. While we're mentioning Silence of the Lambs, a bit of Lecter does seem to show in Hopkins' performance. Merriwether mentions - more than once - what a great smile Clancy has but when Clancy demonstrates said smile it's more akin to how Hannibal looked before he bit the face off Sergeant Pembry.

And it's not just the aforementioned thesping threesome who are sold short by the writing - there's a lot of acting talent going to waste here, most notably Xander Berkeley, Sharon Lawrence, Marley Shelton and Janine Turner who are given the sum total of zero to work with. Turner's role, in particular, is almost a walk-on. This is Janine Turner's role as described by my thoughts from the moment she appeared on screen: "Is that Janine Turner?" "It is Janine Turner. Great!" "So what's she going to do?" "Oh, nothing." Don't even get me started on the nigh-on criminal squandering of Xander Berkeley's considerable talents. Let's move on.

As I previously mentioned, there is a "name" actor playing the serial killer, much like Kevin Spacey in Seven. As he's featured on the posters here I don't feel that I'm giving too much away by saying it's Colin Farrell. I think he's a decent actor but he doesn't get to prove that here. Solace suggests that the killer is taking the lives of certain people out of some sense of moral duty but Farrell is saddled with a character that is prone to droning on about his responsibility and could probably bore most of his victims to death without having to resort to any kind of sharp implement. Mr Farrell, you deserve better than this.

This listless non-thriller even manages to throw in a car chase which is guaranteed to set your pulse to exactly the same rate it was before it began. It also features Hopkins predicting where a fleeing perp will drive so there's a bit of exciting "LEFT!", "RIGHT!", "STOP!" action and a tetchy Cornish asking why they're not going in the same direction as the vehicle they're chasing. Well, duh, you're being taken on a psychic shortcut, aren't you? If you think that sounds like a load of nonsense, I probably should have talked to you before I decided to watch this.

For all its lofty ambitions, Solace winds up as being both unrelentingly silly and remarkably dull, wasting a cast most films would kill for and, perhaps more unforgivably, wasting the time of its audience. Easily one of the worst of this year.