Any venture that ploughs money into post-Katrina New Orleans is a good thing, but Jerry Bruckheimer might have made more people happy had he spent $80m on the city's reconstruction rather than on this rickety action contraption.

The production does, however, deserve some credit for relocating from its original Long Island setting to the Big Easy, where its first act is to blow up a ferry carrying 500-plus Mardi Gras revellers.

Agent Doug Carlin (Washington) of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (so much more glam than 'Customs') is despatched to investigate the atrocity.

A slick operator, he quickly surmises that the key to the crime is the washed-up corpse of Claire Kuchever (the delectable Paula Patton of Idlewild). Oddly, she died two hours before the explosion... and left a message for Doug before doing so.

Helping to solve the puzzle is fellow agent Pryzwarra – gesundheit! – played by Val Kilmer, whose evolution into a space hopper is almost complete.

Pryzwarra's team of boffins has developed a whizzy super-surveillance gizmo which gives a 360-degree view of absolutely anywhere. The images are in real time... but from four days ago! But they can't be paused or rewound, so you only get one look.

As explained to Doug, the science wouldn't exactly have Stephen Hawking doing wheelies: the machine works like folding a piece of paper in a certain way so that you can see the past from the present. Or something.

(Had the actors folded the script likewise, it would have fitted in the bin perfectly.)

All clear? Good. So, figuring that Claire's killer is the terrorist, they zoom in on her house just in time to catch her in the shower.

That's enough for smitten Doug to demand that they tinker with the fabric of the universe to save her - and the people on the boat, naturally. Then the fun starts. Or rather, the fun starts back then.

PhDs are not required to see that the list of faster, easier solutions to Doug's problems would stretch to the nearest star. But this is no place for logic and the laws of physics.

Action-wise, the film lives up to its title – bar the first-ever car chase where the vehicles are four days apart, Scott adheres strictly to his patented big bang theory.

Ever the pro, Washington just about manages to keep his tongue out of his cheek while Jim Caviezel brings calm intensity to the religious loony-bomber.

But his motives are left unexplored as the cosmically implausible proceedings come to a spluttering close.

Somehow, you could see that coming.

Elliott Noble