主播大秀

meets Pulp Fiction in an occasionally entertaining but thoroughly predictable comedy that could almost be dubbed Lock, Stock And Two Gormless Limeys.

Stuck in Chicago without a bean, small-time British conman Pete (Neil Morrissey) and his long-suffering friend Andy (Adrian Dunbar) can't believe their luck when a stolen briefcase nets them a bundle of cash and the key to a swanky hotel room.

Ah, but there's a catch. Local mob boss Franco D'Amico (Louis DiBianco) has mistaken them for assassins and expects them to bump off his chief rival Ben Cutler (Pete Postlethwaite). Meanwhile the real triggermen - slick Terry (Donnie Wahlberg) and oafish Tommy (Michael Rapaport) - are left wondering why the man who hired them hasn't got in touch.

Things get (needlessly) complicated when Terry falls for Emma (Claire Forlani), the daughter of the man he's supposed to kill, and by the sudden arrival of Pete's heavily pregnant wife Penny (Amanda Plummer, making a doomed stab at a Mancunian accent in a role originally earmarked for Nicole Appleton).

"WE'VE BEEN DOWN THIS ROAD TOO MANY TIMES"

But really we've been down this road too many times for these blackly comic shenanigans to provoke more than an apathetic shrug.

Morrissey's opening voiceover tells us "there are no absolutes in human misery", but having to endure yet another Tarantino/Ritchie wannabe must come close.

There are compensations. Rapaport's goon has some priceless lines, while Postlethwaite lends his craggy-faced kingpin depth.

However, to have not one but two sets of bickering hitmen only points up the creative bankruptcy of John Bradshaw's cheap-as-chips potboiler, whose desperate attempts to mimic the hip cool of Grosse Pointe Blank are so dated as to be almost quaint.

Triggermen is released in UK cinemas on Friday 26th December 2003.