Stand by for a feast of bad acting from good but miscast performers in this typically rotten recent British crime thriller, desperately trying to reheat some weary corruption-in-high-places themes. Rupert Graves puts up a valiant struggle to play a cliché role as a drunken northerner down and out in London, who witnesses a murder near that must-include item for every Brit film - Tower Bridge. That nice Annabella Sciorra is even more like a duck out of water as one of those uncynical tabloid journalists who believes his story, and Franco Nero is hardly overstretched as a suave Italian villain. But poor John Hannah is adrift in a sea of soggy lines as Sciorra's wise-cracking colleague and Michael Gambon gives one of his hammiest performances as a corrupt detective who wants to put Rupert in a Graves situation, though he's outhammed by Graham Crowden as Graves's fellow down-and-out. We know it's only a movie, but the twisty plot could hardly be more preposterous and less persuasive, and the climax leaves you thinking you've just wasted 90 minutes of your life. The score, script and direction are all in need of a blood transfusion, though, to be fair, it's quite pacy, flashy and never boring.

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