It isn't often you see a mainstream film with such major stars as Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson that turns out as badly as this.

A family is thrown into turmoil when their son's girlfriend is killed and the boy takes flight, leaving bloodstained clothes and tools in the back of his car.

This is certainly a viable dramatic situation, but writer Ted Tally has totally failed to construct a watchable story around it.

What really happened is made clear after an hour, leaving the film with nowhere to go, despite the writer's efforts to make the protagonists tell different stories.

You keep thinking there must be something more to this, some twist, but in the end there isn't.

The framework of the plot, such as it is, leaves Barbet Schroeder's clumsy direction no room to create dramatic tension.

What attracted the stars to the script as written can only be guessed.

But their strained performances, as it tries very unconvincingly to make them wrangle, are evidence of their problems.

Static, halting, dull and dismal.