Crikey, what a mess! Big ambition, big names and generous budget do not a good film make, and here's the proof. This ‘modern fairytale for cynical times', as the director has grandiosely described it, fails on just about every level.

Scenes from four stories intermingle, four talented actors man- and woman-fully trying their hardest to make us believe in their roles. A soppy Sam Riley (so very disappointing after his stunning debut in last year's Control) as Milo finds himself jilted and goes back to find his childhood best friend... except that she's ... well, that would be telling. Bernard Hill stumps dourly around the streets looking for his war-traumatised son. Poor Eva Green overacts her socks off as Emilia, attention seeking, self-pitying, and above all intensely irritating performance artist whose chef d'oeuvre is to film herself tragically committing suicide - you know, the blurred lipstick, the weird dances, the whiney voice, the draggly dresses - again and again. Her college tutor is not impressed, and neither are we. My mother in law would say she needs her bottom smacking. Most baffling, a gruff voiced Ryan Phillippe, mostly hidden in a leather mask, rails and storms around the mean streets of an alternative universe called - wait for it - Meanwhile City. Something's upset him. It's a kind of fantasy on the London landscape, where religion is obligatory. At least this is interestingly imagined, though its overwrought scenes soon pall as much as the contemporary London locations do.

Even veterans like Susannah York and Kika Markham have been roped in. To no avail. It's a terribly self-important mishmash, with sketchy ideas of plot and character thrown into a half-baked stew of big ideas. Maybe with more consideration it could have evolved into different films to better effect. The final scene manages to combine chaos with deadly torpor, as ‘a single bullet determines the destiny of these four characters'. Frankly, Mr Franklyn, I didn't give a damn.