Watchmen is a referential adaptation of its source material. As such, it boasts the same strengths and suffers from the same weaknesses. The strengths are its imagination and the way it perverts the superhero genre, and the weaknesses are the disappointing final act and the episodic nature of the narrative – the story doesn’t really flow.

Thankfully, though, the movie, by necessity, has pared the story down. In the graphic novel there are large sections that feel pretty superfluous. Yes some of the digressions helped to give the story colour, but at other times they threatened to derail the whole enterprise. So I, for one, think that a little focus has helped things a lot.

One of the sections that was less than enthralling in the graphic novel was Dr Manhattan’s exile to Mars. On and on it went and it soon grew tiresome. But weirdly enough, in the film, it’s one of the highlights. It manages to convey Manhattan’s isolation and alienation without bashing it over your head.

My favourite part of the Dr Manhattan thread is the flashback sequence that gives you his back-story. We see him fall in love and then we see his rebirth. It’s very economically done and it accurately captures the stream of conscious nature of memories. We don’t see things in chronological order. We see little pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

The sequence is also ripe with melancholy. As the sole superhero in the world, he’s gifted with unparalleled powers. However, these powers detach him further and further from humanity. He can no longer relate to the ordinary person’s petty concerns. As such, as he looks back on his life, his voice has the passionless hum of Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But despite this, Dr Manhattan is not devoid of emotion. In one scene he’s coerced into appearing on a TV talk show and is then confronted with a former lover that he apparently gave cancer to. His anger and his distress is so intense that he exiles himself to Mars.

However, even though I enjoyed the Dr Manhattan story, you can’t escape some of its juvenility. This is a man who cries for people to leave him alone and who basically goes to his room to brood when life gets tough. And this juvenility extends to the character of Rorschach, the masked vigilante who spouts fascistic voiceover like a second rate Travis Bickle.

But even though the character is derivative, Rorschach does get all the best action scenes. And mainly for that reason he ends up being perhaps the film’s most enjoyable character.

One of the best bits of action is when Rorschach fights a bunch of cops. He takes an improvised flamethrower to them and then manages to fight off half a dozen of them with his fists alone. I also enjoyed the way that Rorschach takes out a prison inmate – he throws burning oil over him. And then there’s the grisly way that he disposes of a child murderer – he repeatedly pounds a meat cleaver into his head. All of this stuff superbly captures the grime of the character.

Other action sequences don’t fare as well. Some of the fight sequences, especially the ones involving Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, are far too fanciful. For instance, there’s a jailbreak scene where Nite Owl and Silk Spectre fight off a dozen or so inmates. They don’t have weapons. They don’t have gadgets. All they have are their fists. And so it doesn’t really ring true that this supposedly out of shape man and this less than threatening woman could beat up a bunch of grizzled convicts so easily. The action in this scene is just done to try and look cool.

Another action scene that doesn’t really work is the final battle between Ozymadias, Nite Owl and Rorschach. People bounce off walls and punches seem to have little impact. Consequently it all feels a little pointless.

And the film, like the graphic novel, suffers in the final act. The first problem is that Ozymadias is a colourless villain. He doesn’t have any menace and he isn’t any fun. Secondly, the twist of him being the bad guy is revealed far too late. Instead of feeling like an inevitable plot development, it feels like a desperate way of giving the film a resolution. Yes the film gives a few hints that he might be a bad guy, but his character is so far on the periphery that it’s hard to summon any enthusiasm when his true nature is revealed.

One big improvement in the final sequence, though, is the attack on New York. In the graphic novel people are killed by a giant alien squid thing. However, in the film there’s none of that nonsense. A ball of energy just wipes everyone out.

But although the ending is less than stellar, there’s still plenty to enjoy in the film. In particular I enjoyed everything to do with The Comedian. He’s a terrible person, far worse than the tedious Ozymadias, but he has some of the most memorable scenes. One scene that springs to mind is his attempted rape of a fellow masked hero. It’s vile and it’s brutal but it also makes for riveting cinema. The Comedian is such a sick perversion of the traditional American hero that you can’t help but wish that the film was dedicated entirely to him.

I also love some of the small moments in the film. There’s a dream sequence where Nite Owl and Silk Spectre rip off their skins to reveal their true nature underneath – underneath are their superhero costumes. Somehow these alter egos better represent their true selves. And this fact is further illustrated by the way that Nite Owl fails to perform sexually when he’s in his civilian clothes. He can only perform when he’s in costume.

And the kinky relationship between sex and heroism feels honest enough – Nite Owl and Silk Specter seem to perform their heroic acts largely because it makes them hot. That I can believe in and enjoy a lot more than a knob who thinks he’s Alexander the Great killing lots of people with a ball of energy so that he can save even more from the fires of nuclear war.

“Oh man! Oh god, oh man! Oh god, oh man! Oh god, oh man! Oh god, oh man! Oh god!”

Want to find the worst line reading in the history of cinema? Then look no further than Tough Guys Don’t Dance and the above dialogue. To be sure, any actor would find it hard to wrap their mouth around such shit, but Ryan O’Neal somehow makes it extra pungent. He speaks it like he’s a being who is only aware of verbal communication as a concept – it hasn’t yet been proven to his satisfaction that it’s a reality.

Confounding the scene is Norman Mailer’s direction. He begins the scene with some appropriately lush, soapy music and then asks Ryan O’Neal to open a letter while standing on a cliff that overlooks a beach. Waves crash below and O’Neal reads the note. In time honoured soap opera fashion, the author of the letter begins talking. We then find out, via some incredibly over the top Isabella Rossellini voiceover, that O’Neal’s wife is having an affair with Rossellini’s husband and that she wants O’Neal to murder the pair of them. The music then reappears full blast. However, instead of lush orchestration, we now get the musical equivalent of a police siren going off. Because you know, potential murder must be signalled with klaxons and flashing lights. And after O’Neal repeats those horrible words, the camera goes around in circles. Oh the dizzying confusion! Oh the mental anguish! O’Neal’s head is in a spin! Do you see? DO YOU SEE?!?

I also like the way that O’Neal decides he has to drive all the way to the beach in order to read this letter. After all, Rossellini hands the note to him in person. So he could, you know, read it in his car. Or he could read it on the sidewalk after Rossellini closes the door in his face. Or he could even take it to his house. But no, he decides that a letter of this magnitude must absolutely be read on a cliff that overlooks a beach. Nothing else will do. He needs the waves, the ocean spray and the sand dunes. This is the perfect backdrop to a good old bit of letter reading.

Tough Guys Don’t Dance tries to be a tough film noir in The Big Sleep mould but instead comes across as a big budget Days of Our Lives. All the blood and all the sex in the world can’t disguise the tasteless camp of the whole enterprise.

I first knew that Tough Guys Don’t Dance was going to be something special when O’Neal’s redneck wife appears in a skimpy outfit playing a trumpet. She then responds to a comment O’Neal makes about her collar and cuffs not matching with the following wisecrack. ‘Ah used to have golden blonde pussy hair until ah scorched it with tha football team’.

Soon after this is a scene where O’Neal, his wife and a couple of friends decide to have a séance. For some reason, O’Neal’s wife and one of their friends see something bad happening in the future. What follows is not only a close-up of two hysterical people screaming, but one in deep focus – you get two melodramatic screamers sharing the same frame. Most excellent.

Would you believe it, the bad omens come true. O’Neal’s wife leaves him and he finds not only one severed head – he finds two! Oh god, oh man!

The story that follows is both dense and senseless. Therefore it’s better to enjoy Tough Guys Don’t Dance as a series of lurid vignettes. The plot as a whole is a fucking mess.

One of the funniest scenes is when O’Neal picks up a woman and her lover. O’Neal then tells them that he feels demented – that he could fuck the woman with the man watching. Demented? It seems like such a strange choice of words. But maybe it would make some sense if it weren’t for O’Neal sitting there like an impassive slab of meat. He doesn’t seem to have the imagination to be demented.

But this revelation of supposed dementia turns the woman on and she begins to perform a slobbering blow-job. And just when you’re tittering in amusement, you jump cut to O’Neal fucking the woman in a parking lot while the lover stands there crying. ‘Would you let me speak?’ he says. ‘In the name of decency would you let me speak!’ What is it that you want to say, mate? That the sight of the puffy Ryan O’Neal puffing your old lady with his puff-puff is distressing you? Yeah, you and me both.

Another favourite scene is a lousily choreographed fight sequence. The fisticuffs make the actors look like a couple of drunken squirrels duking it out. We even have one character throw dirt in the eyes of the other. But despite this apparent lack of lethality, a man manages to stab and kill O’Neal’s dog. This leads to the film’s second best piece of dialogue. ‘Have a heart,’ says a dying thug. And then O’Neal responds, in his gravest tones, ‘Your knife…is in my dog.’ The delivery is just so unconvincing that I was doubled up with laughter. And then exacerbating my laughter was the thug’s reaction. ‘I’m sorry, man, I ain’t got nothing against your dog.’ Yeah, me and Rex were pals. Many was the time we used to shoot the shit over a bowl of Pedigree Chum. I’m sorry I had to gut him.

The third best line is when O’Neal’s dad dumps the pair of heads in the sea. He comes back from his errand and tells his son, ‘I just deep sixed two heads.’ It’s not every day that you get to say that. I mean, if you’re really pushed, you might be asked to deep six one head in your lifetime. But to deep six two heads? That’s some heavy shit, man.

But despite the grisly nature of this task, O’Neal’s dad is non-plussed. He’s just happy that O’Neal didn’t grow up to be a damn poofter like he thought he’d be. I mean, O’Neal’s character wanted to be a writer. That’s some gay shit right there, isn’t it? And so deep sixing a couple of heads to prove that you’re Barry Big Bollocks is the least you can do.

Another choice scene occurs towards the end. You see, there’s this corrupt Police Chief that’s married to Isabella Rossellini’s character. But he’s a bit pissed off because Rossellini used to fuck O’Neal and O’Neal screwed up her reproductive organs when they had a car crash some years back. And so at the end the Police Chief confronts O’Neal. But then the Police Chief headbutts a door and has a stroke. Woah. No fight. No knife attack. No gun shots. The villain just hits his head on a bit of wood and has a stroke. Wonderful.

But it gets better. The evil Police Chief, now with half of his face disabled and his speech impaired, has an argument with his wife. He tells her that he made her come sixteen times a night. She then says that none of the orgasms were good. And his reply? ‘That’s because you have no woooooooomb!’ This came so far from left field that I think I squirted water out of my nose. The mad, howling delivery of the word ‘womb’ combined with the childishness of the insult had me in stitches. I do believe I watched that bit more than once.

By the way, did I mention that the crazy Police Chief confesses that he’s the sort of man who has to come twice a day? He says he has to use both nuts to hump two women each day otherwise he doesn’t sleep too well. And in an earlier scene he tells a story about a serial killer who took photos of his victims. He says that the story turns him on. Yeah, insane doesn’t quite describe the character.

But then the whole film is insane. Everything here is exaggerated and over the top. I mean, for fuck’s sake, in this film Penn Jilette gives Isbabella Rossellini a series of thundering orgasms. You don’t see that every day. And so what little enjoyment you can take out of this turd of a film is that it actually got made. Honestly, if you’re an aspiring filmmaker, just watch this movie and realise that people handed cash over to make it. Oh god, oh man.

Grimly predictable but mindlessly enjoyable, Tango & Cash limps onto the screen like a mangy dog. It has no pedigree whatsoever, but the ugly old mutt still manages to put a smile on my face.

Perhaps the most pleasing thing about the whole enterprise is its fidelity to tired buddy cop clichés. Here we have two detectives who are forced to team up in order to defeat a common foe. Will they get on? Will they grow to like one another? Will they get the bad guy? What the hell do you think?

The bad guy here is a mentalist called Perret (played by Jack Palance). He likes to sell drugs and is pissed off that Tango and Cash are doing such a good job of cleaning up the streets. Therefore he decides to conceive of a plan where the cops are framed for a crime they didn’t commit.

Now framing the cops seems to me like a bit of a pain in the arse. Why go to all that effort when you can just kill them? Well, Perret, being the mental giant he is, has already thought of that. You see, killing them will make them martyrs. Better to disgrace them and have them put away for a few years. That way their reputations get tarnished and maybe someone can kill them in prison. The perfect plan.

The first part of the plan is pulled off with ruthless efficiency. Tango and Cash, working separately, get tip offs about a drug deal. However, when they arrive they find a dead man. And before they can do a thing, cops arrive and arrest them (the dead man is a Federal Agent). Wow, that was easy.

And the trial is just as easy. A planted murder weapon and an obviously fake tape recording are apparently enough to have the best cops in the city convicted. I love it when a plan comes together.

Too bad, though, for Perret that he’s dealing with the awesome power of Tango and Cash. They will not stand for this shit.

Tango is played by Sylvester Stallone. He’s well dressed, has lots of money and is apparently only a cop for the excitement. He’s the sort of guy that will stand in front of a huge juggernaut, shoot at the driver, have the driver stop and then deliver a killer quip as the driver shoots through the window from braking so hard – ‘Glad you could drop in’. He’ll then face up to some idiot local cop and find the drugs that no one else can find by just randomly shooting at stuff. He’s quite a guy. Oh, and he also thinks that Rambo is a pussy. Well, Tango can’t be right about everything.

Cash is played by Kurt Russell. He’s the scruff to Tango’s smooth. The Chevy to Tango’s Mercedes. The Vegemite to Tango’s Marmite. He’s the sort of guy who will look at a mirror and admire his beautificious mullet before being attacked by an Asian who comes rampaging through the reflective surface. He’s also the sort of guy who will torture the said Asian and will make him speak English even though the lying bastard claimed he couldn’t. In other words, packaging aside, he’s exactly the same as the suited Tango. He’s a cop who doesn’t play by the rules and who gets results, dammit.

Initially, Tango and Cash don’t like each other much. Both think they’re the best cop in the city and each antagonises the other. However, pretty soon it’s clear they’re in love.

As with all the best romances, the love begins in prison. No sooner do they walk through the gate than they get in the shower together. And no sooner do they get in the shower than they begin checking each other out and start making cock jokes. And Stallone almost jumps out of his skin when Russell goes to pick up the soap. Stallone makes out that his reaction is borne of fear, but it’s clear it’s out of nervous excitement. And Russell’s attempts to play hard to get are pathetic. He says that Stallone shouldn’t flatter himself. It’s the trademark reaction of a jilted lover – he doesn’t want Stallone to know that he desperately wants to have his ass cheeks spread.

In another scene, Russell dresses up in drag. Supposedly he does it in order to evade capture, but he’s clearly playing out a deep seated fantasy. And then later, Stallone catches Russell getting up to hanky panky with Stallone’s sister while still wearing a dress. Russell is clearly trying to make Stallone’s character jealous. And Stallone falls for it hook, line and sinker. He tries to make out that he’s concerned about his sister ending up with a prick like Cash, but really he wants a piece of the action himself.

One of my favourite scenes is when Tango and Cash get electrocuted in prison. They’re confronted by about fifty guys (guys they put away) and they’re strung up. They’re then lowered into water and electrocuted. It’s kind of a rip off of the scene in Lethal Weapon, but Stallone and Russell’s reactions are hilarious. They overact a treat. And the scene is made extra funny by the way that Jack Palance’s character turns up out of nowhere so that he can watch the torture. I guess he must have friends in the prison. And then when some guards arrive and break things up, Palance slinks back into the shadows without being seen. Does he have keys? Does he know every guard? His escape from within a prison seems awful easy.

But then Palance’s character is a hoot from beginning to end. He portrays a supervillian who likes to play games. For example, one of his favourite things is playing with mice. He likes to put them in mazes and cackles when they can’t get out. He also has lots of monster trucks in his backyard and has a massive off-road course. In fact, he’s more like a Bond villain than anything else.

Speaking of Bond, there’s also a blatant Q rip-off. He works for the police and creates all kinds of crazy gadgets, one of which is a stuffed dog that shoots bullets. However, better than this he creates a super-vehicle…out of an RV. You know, James Bond gets an Aston Martin and Tango and Cash get a crappy RV with a mini-gun on the side. Sounds fair, doesn’t it?

The fact that the film descends into Bond-type super-villainy shows the paucity of ideas contained within. But it also makes for terrifically bad cinema. A car chase with a shitty RV and some monster trucks? A final confrontation with a wall of mirrors (haven’t seen that before!)? Excellent.

I also have to mention that Palance’s henchman is an Englishman. But the guy who plays him is from California. Therefore we’re assaulted with a cod-cockney accent and lots of mangled Englishisms. It should be offensive to my eardrums, but it ends up being hilarious. ‘Piss awff! Bollocks to plan A.’ ‘You fackin’ wanka!’ And in response to shit like this, Russell gets to utter one of the best lines. ‘I don’t want to be killed by this Limey immigrant jerk-off. I want to be killed by an American…jerk-off.’ Wonderful stuff.

One of the conventions of the 80s cop film is that it must include strippers. And Tango & Cash is no different in this regard. However, in this film, the stripper is Tango’s sister and she’s played by Teri Hatcher. But seeing as she’s a classy broad who doesn’t just make a living out of getting her tits out, her act consists of her drumming on an electric drum kit in a sparkly bikini. Quite why anyone would pay to see this act, I don’t know. If I went to a strip bar and didn’t see breasts, I’d be incredibly disappointed. I would be even more disappointed if the act included pretentious drumming.

At the end, Tango allows Cash to date his sister, but the final image is of Tango and Cash standing there holding hands. Yes, L.A.’s two best cops are finally united. United in work and united in love.

I’m sure that the first thing that springs into people’s minds when they see Armageddon is why did they shoot a deep core drilling team into space? Why not train astronauts to bore a hole into an asteroid? After all, these people are among the most intelligent, most disciplined, most skilled individuals on the planet. But the film tells us that drilling is an art. Apparently boring a hole into a rock would be too much for a bunch of scientists and pilots.

The real answer is that Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer despise astronauts and what they represent. They represent education and all the evils that come with it. You know, things like patience, dedication and coolness under pressure. Real men work hard and play hard. They don’t do their job quietly and methodically. Hell, you get a bunch of astronauts to blow up an asteroid and you’d probably fall asleep at the lack of Star Wars references. They’re a bunch of boring pussies.

The drillers are supposed to be a bunch of everymen. They’re supposed to be guys that you can identify with. But would you want a bunch of regular guys trying to save the planet? I think if an asteroid were to hit us that I’d want exceptional people to rescue us. I wouldn’t want to entrust my life and the life of the planet to Joe the plumber or a guy called Harry who drills for oil.

The first time we see Harry (Bruce Willis), he’s hitting golf balls at a Greenpeace boat. Take that you fucking dickless liberals! How dare you care about the planet! How dare you criticise the American right to rape the shit out of the Earth! If it were up to you we’d all be speaking Russian and riding oxen to work, you pinko turds.

To illustrate what a great guy Harry is, he tries to shoot a man who sleeps with his daughter. That’s real mature. I mean, did you expect her to remain pure forever? Did you think that she was always going to be yours? Well, Harry seems to think that way. So much so that the very idea that she’d have sex with a man makes him break out in a jealous rage.

But in Harry’s defence, his daughter does sleep with Ben Affleck. I mean, if you had a daughter and she slept with Ben Affleck, you’d get a gun out as well, wouldn’t you?

The other ‘heroes’ of the film are the usual ridiculous ragtag bunch. You have Steve Buscemi as a sex-obsessed joker, Owen Wilson as a cowboy type, Will Patton as an estranged father, Michael Clarke Duncan as a dumb black man and some fatso who doesn’t really do much. They’re among the most unlikeable group of guys you can imagine. Well, they’re unlikable if you’re a smarmy, godless communist. If you’re an honest, salt of the earth, beer-swilling redneck, you’ll probably think they’re swell. I mean, heroes who only save the world so that they can stop paying tax? U.S.A! U.S.A!

The first time a piece of asteroid hits the planet, it hits New York. What a surprise, eh? And so therefore the damage only extends to tourists, liberals and some ethnic minorities. No big loss. But then NASA learns that a bigger asteroid is heading for them and that some decent people might get killed. This news that a global killer is heading for the planet leads to hushed mutterings of, ‘My god’.

Michael Bay’s handling of non-white folks is always precious and he outdoes himself in this movie. Near the beginning we see a motor-mouthed black man riding a bicycle with an ugly dog inside. Why, I’m not quite sure. But the man is an idiot and then proceeds to have an argument with another silly NWP*. Oh those crazy minorities. The stuff they get up to. Needless to say they get hit by a piece of asteroid, the useless fuckers.

Then about two scenes later we have a cartoonish Asian businessman turn up. He’s all smiles and speaks in a funny accent. And then when the drillers strike oil, he gives the thumbs up and says, ‘You’re the man Harry!’ as he drips black gold all over his suit.

But most heinous of all, you have Michael Clarke Duncan. He’s a big, muscular bozo who does what he’s told and who doesn’t have a brain cell in his head. Therefore he’s the good kind of black man. He’s the grateful kind who takes orders well and who won’t fuck Harry’s daughter. He’s also a fucking baby. During a psych test he begins crying and says that he’d like a hug. Awww, the silly black man. I’m sure some fried chicken and watermelon will calm those nerves of yours.

We also have some marvellous hatred of the French. I mean, Bay doesn’t just come out and say, ‘Don’t those smelly, cheese-eating surrender monkeys suck miles of cock?’ but he does have Paris annihilated. From the viewpoint of the gargoyle on Notre Dame we see the city get obliterated. And is there any real comment on this? Is there an expression of sadness at the fact that one of the most beautiful cities in the world has been destroyed? Nope. It’s hardly mentioned. After all, Paris is hardly Omaha or Mobile or Dallas. The destruction of those fine cities would maybe warrant tears, but a few frogs getting vaporized is an insignificant footnote.

When the film’s not trying to be offensive, it’s trying to make you puke. The romance between Affleck and Liv Tyler seems to represent the way of life the drillers are trying to preserve. But this is a man who wants to stuff crackers down his girlfriend’s knickers and this is a couple that smooches in a rocket booster. If they’re a symbol of life on Earth then let the asteroid hit and wipe us from existence.

We also have to listen to the President make a speech as clichéd shots of various nations flash across the screen. It’s like Michael Bay’s sole exposure to the world comes through Michael Jackson videos and Benneton commercials. The French sit at cafes, Asians eat endless noodles, Indians sit by the Taj Mahal (of course) and good old Americans gather round in antique automobiles. Bay’s view of the world is so infantile it beggars belief.

But wouldn’t you know it, it takes a few good Americans to preserve this way of life. A few good roughnecks.

The drillers are in space for like ten seconds before shit starts blowing up – a space station gets destroyed and a shuttle then gets hit by a piece of asteroid. This leads us to one of Michael Bay’s trademarks – men falling to their knees in slow-motion and muttering ‘My god’ as all hope seems lost. But this time it’s better. This time Billy Bob Thorton does it after dropping a NASA mug. Must Bay do this in every film? Isn’t there any other way of communicating deep despair?

After the shuttle crash the astronauts proceed to fart about on an asteroid that looks curiously like the Fortress of Solitude, and an asteroid that seems to have the same gravity as Earth…but only when the script calls for it. When the script wants things to go haywire people fly into space with reckless abandon, but for the most part, they’re fine.

One of the occasions where some convenient gravity comes into play is when Ben Affleck decides to jump a canyon in a space vehicle called The Armadillo. At first it seems like they haven’t got a chance of jumping it, but wouldn’t you know it, the normal gravity stops for a while and they fly over it with ease.

Speaking of the Armadillo, why the hell has it got a mini-gun on it? Are they expecting to encounter aliens or Muslims up there, or even Muslim aliens? What’s the point? Oh yeah, I forgot. It’s so that Affleck can conveniently blast his way out of a fix and so that Steve Buscemi’s character can go nuts.

‘He’s got space dementia!’ Yes, that’s how Buscemi’s madness is described when he decides it would be a great idea to try and blow the asteroid up with a mini-gun. And I thought it was just a Muse song.

Another line that had me scratching my head was, ‘I blew the tranny.’ Do they have trannies in space and how would the blowing work in a vaccum? Oh, he means the transmission. My mistake…

One of the most awful scenes occurs when one of the shuttle’s pilots is being choked out by Harry. You see, the nuclear bomb that’s going to destroy the asteroid is going to be remotely detonated by the government wanktoids on Earth. Of course Harry wants to stop this. Annoyingly, though, the pilot wants to follow orders. But this is a Michael Bay movie. People don’t follow orders here. They go by gut instinct. And so Harry decides to choke the guy. And would you believe it, with 60 seconds left to go before the bomb detonates, Harry manages to choke the guy, convince him that he’s wrong and get the guy to recover from his choking and disarm the bomb. In 60 seconds! Honestly, the guy is being choked and can hardly breath and in the next shot he’s on his feet disarming the bomb. He didn’t even have to get tools. They just magically appear in his hand.

Another awful scene is when Affleck draws the short straw. You see, the bomb can no longer be remotely detonated, so someone is going to have to detonate it by hand. This responsibility falls to Affleck. But before he can do it, Harry takes the burden upon himself. So therefore we have to suffer the sound and sight of Affleck shouting, ‘I love you Harry’ as Harry walks off to his certain death. Never before or since has Affleck sounded so retarded.

In most films Harry would say his goodbyes and do his duty, but this being a Michael Bay film, it seems like Harry says goodbye to his daughter for a couple of hours. A single tear flows down Harry’s cheek as he realises that she’s going to end up with that horse-faced knobhead.

The end of the film sees Affleck and Tyler getting married as a photo of Harry watches on. We’re supposed to think that he’d be pleased at this union, but we know the truth. Harry is sad that it isn’t him who’s in Affleck’s position.

*Non-white person

I’m sure that every kid that has been bullied at school has had some sort of revenge fantasy in their head. Most of the time I imagine it’s quite banal. You know, wouldn’t it be nice to punch my tormenter in the face or wouldn’t it be nice to kick them in the shins. However, with Let the Right One In, the childhood revenge fantasy turns into something a lot darker.

It begins routinely enough. A young Boris Becker look-a-like called Oskar plays out scenarios where he stands up to the bullies that torment him. In one scene reminiscent of Taxi Driver he talks to a tree and then stabs it with a knife. Pretty standard stuff. But then a strange girl moves in next door to him.

We immediately know there’s something wrong with the girl. First of all, despite the sub-zero temperatures, she wears little clothing outside. Secondly, when she meets Oskar, she’s standing on top of a climbing frame. And then when she goes to greet him, she doesn’t climb down. She jumps down. But the jump is done in a very subtle way – it looks like she floats. Yep, this girl ain’t normal.

Long story short. The girl is a vampire.

One of the great things about Let the Right One In is that it’s a vampire film that doesn’t feel overly familiar. Sure we’ve seen child vampires and sure we’ve seen humans seduced by them, but because of the setting (suburban Sweden in perhaps the 70s or 80s) it feels somewhat different.

Another thing that helps is the relationship between Eli (the vampire girl) and her adult helper Hakan. It’s this man’s duty to feed her fresh blood. He does this by capturing teens, stringing them up and slitting their throats. He then collects the blood and gives it to the girl. It’s never made clear what the exact relationship is between the girl and man but again it’s an element that feels suitably unique (even though I’m sure someone has already explored the ‘feeder’ element before).

One thing that seems quite clear is that Hakan isn’t Eli’s father. He seems more like a devoted lover. He literally does anything for the girl. This includes, killing, hiding bodies and committing suicide. But it seems like the relationship between them has gone sour. When, one day, Hakan fails to get blood for the girl, she screams at him. He can only apologise. It’s clear that he adores her but it doesn’t look like his feelings are reciprocated.

Hakan’s demise occurs when he tries to take blood from another boy. They’re in the dressing room of a gym and the boy’s friends suddenly appear outside. Hakan is trapped and decides to pour a corrosive chemical over his face in a bid to kill himself. However, it doesn’t work and he ends up in hospital.

The make-up for Hakan’s face shows what a missed opportunity Two-Face was in The Dark Knight. In that film there was an unconvincing mixture of make-up and CGI. It just looked wrong. But Hakan’s face, which is burnt through so that you can see his teeth and muscle, looks a lot better. It really is pretty horrific.

And in the hospital Hakan performs a final act of devotion. He removes his breathing apparatus and lets Eli, who has climbed the exterior of the building to get to the room, feed on him. She then lets his body fall to the ground below.

The shot of Eli climbing the outside of the hospital is fantastic. If it were done in a close-up, it would look ridiculous. Instead, it’s done in a long shot. And as such it’s simply done and suitably creepy. There’s no need for flashy special effects.

The only scene in the film that really fails is the single one that rejects the film’s pleasingly down to earth sensibility. There’s a scene where a woman, who was bitten by Eli but not killed, gets attacked by a load of cats. But the cats are mainly CGI. And as such it just looks stupid. The cats never look convincing and the whole attack itself is rather ridiculous.

Compare this to one of the film’s best moments. The woman who was attacked by cats lies in the hospital. What with her sudden aversion to light, the feline attack and the strange noises she hears, she realises that she’s become a vampire. But rather than accept her new life and feast off blood, she decides to commit suicide. And she does it by asking a hospital orderly to open the window for her. He happily does this and she bursts into flames. The temptation for modern filmmakers would be to use CGI, but this film decides to go for a real burn. And unsurprisingly, it looks great.

And the film as a whole looks wonderful. The photography is never flashy, but it manages to make dull Swedish suburbia look interesting and full of menace.

The real menace in Oskar’s mind, though, is the bully who constantly attacks him. However, the kid in question doesn’t look really tough. He looks like a young version of Mathieu Amalric. You know, the main bad guy in Quantum of Solace. He has a kind of poppy-eyed, toady-faced vibe going on. But despite his unintimidating appearance, he makes Oskar’s life a living hell by having him whipped with a switch, by putting his trousers in a toilet and by generally being a prick.

The answer for Oskar is to embrace his inner killer. He has to hit back. And hit back he does. He smashes the kid with a stick. The look Oskar has on his face when he does this is incredibly convincing. He has that orgasmic, almost hyperventilating look that people get when they finally lash out. You can tell that this feels really good and that Oskar is almost overwhelmed by the pleasure it gives him.

But while the bully is a wanker, Eli is perhaps an even more insidious influence. Some people see their relationship as sweet, but I don’t really see it that way. All the time she’s training Oskar to become used to violence – to try and find his inner killer. Yes she gives him courage and yes she may even like him, but he’s really being groomed to become Hakan’s replacement. Therefore a dark destiny lies in store for Oskar. He gets to grow old and live a nomadic life with an immortal girl. If he stays with her, he’ll never live a normal life, never have a wife and never have kids. He’ll just have to go around and kill folk so that his little girl is okay. And eventually, like Hakan he’ll become an obsolete annoyance. Then someone else will take Oskar’s place.

Therefore I can’t really see anything sweet about the relationship. It seems more sad than anything.