Search: Starring Tommy Flanagan

What it lacks in terms of original ideas, the film tries to make up for with loud music and flashing lights.

The over-abundance of cliched and banal action movie situations - the would-be witty one-liners, the should-have-been-impressive set-pieces etc - that never seem to have quite the impact the film-makers desired.

Ridley Scott's 2nd century extravaganza dies during those pauses between blood, sweat and fear.

The violence is backed up with solitary confinement and mental deprivation

Scott is out to blast fresh air through the fusty drawing rooms of costume drama.

There is an artistic sensibility in Ramsay's approach to film.

Watch this on a big screen if you get the chance.

Treat it as a live action cartoon, with dramatic pretensions, and you will not be disappointed.

Kelly Macdonald has retained the one thing that actors would kill for, the ability to be natural.

It does pretty much as it says on the wrapper: and if some of us do not have the stomach to stay the course, that is on us, not the filmmakers.

Driven to the edge, where sentences silently suicide, this uneventful, thoughtless and infantile pap has beaten me.

Very well observed and boasts some fine performances.