A young couple set off for Spring Break shenanigans in their requisite classic car - a 1970 Oldsmobile 442 for the initiated - but nearly hit a stranger (Bean) loitering on a deserted stretch of highway.

Concerned that the mystery man might be a deranged killer, Grace (Sophia Bush of TV's One Tree Hill) persuades boyfriend Jim (Zachary Knighton) to drive on, without checking if their almost-victim is ok.

He of course catches up with them, cadges a ride, reveals himself to be, in fact, a deranged killer, and chases the idiot pair across the barren New Mexico landscape.

Then he frames them for the brutal murder of an evangelical family, before a desperately obvious finale ends things with both a bang and a whimper.

Lacking Rutger Hauer's effortless air of menace, Bean settles for a buzz-cut and a moody stare. His hitcher switches between being a bit wet for a serial killer - unable to force open a door held closed by tiny Sophia Bush - and a superhuman killing machine, tracking his prey across featureless scrubland and taking out an entire police station with a flick-knife.

The film's failed pitch for originality comes with Bush's character, capable of just as many bad decisions as her weak-willed boyfriend, but unable to shoot her tormentor until after he's tortured and killed every man who could possibly have saved her.

And, when she's not dodging bullets or climbing through barbed-wire fences in her miniskirt, she strips off to her pants for a nap.

As a generic date-movie thriller, The Hitcher just about delivers, offering up just enough make-you-jump moments to last through a carton of popcorn. As an update of a truly effective chiller, it fizzles and fails.

Coming up on Platinum Dunes hit list? Kathryn Bigelow's vampire great, Near Dark. For God's sake stop them, before they kill again.

Ruth Ford