I’ve previously admired – if not exactly enjoyed – Paul Hills’ films The Frontline and Boston Kickout, so this pan-European thriller had a lot of promise. Unfortunately, it all falls apart very quickly.

Dougray Scott is Russian hitman Andrei, who is hired to take out an informant who is about to spill the beans on criminal activity to the police. When artist Rick (Andrew Lee Potts) witnesses the shooting, he too is killed – but then Andrei attends his just-opened art show and through an unlikely contrivance, meets his sister Paula (Laura Elena Harring), and the pair fall in love. This leads to a great deal of tedium for much of the running time as the couple become closer, cop Jurgen Procnow investigates and Andrei tries to leave his former life behind, only to be drawn back in by his mysterious employers.

Going nowhere slowly, The Poet is a remarkably dull and uninvolving film. The love affair between the two leads in entirely unconvincing, and isn’t helped by the fact that the cast give mostly flat performances, struggling with unwieldy and ham-fisted dialogue, where exposition and motivation are painfully spelled out for the audience. Harring is stunningly beautiful, but has all the personality of a cabbage, and Scott seems equally flat – the idea that either of these people could engage in a passionate affair seems ludicrous. Procnow, meanwhile, has very little to do.

There are some visually impressive moments, admittedly – some lovely scenery, a dramatic murder in a nightclub, a mildly kinky sex scene – but for the most part, this is a whole lot of nothing happening, slowly. A depressing failure.

DAVID FLINT

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