According to Phil Parker, who thanks to his involvement with the UK Film Council on the training side had the inside track on these things, millions of pounds was poured down the drain on developing feature film scripts by tv writers from the mid-nineties and not a single film was made as a result. As well as adding further weight to the argument that maybe losing the UKFC is not such a bad thing, that statistic also points to a significant difference between film and tv.

For the most part, tv isn’t about much beyond providing surface level distraction for people tired after their working days and not wanting to be confronted by anything that might make them think. Popular drama presents characters who could more or less be ourselves dealing with the same sort of issues that we get to tackle on an exciting day. Order is inevitably restored by the end of shows like The Bill and Casualty, and if there is any upset it’s the sort that’s faded by the time the credits roll and the next programme starts.

Only in the hands of a skilled writer like Dennis Potter, Paul Abbott, or the team who put together American shows like Six Feet Under and The Shield does tv tend to have any real emotional and intellectual heft, and all the above are the exception rather than the norm.

Film though, is — or can be — a different matter. Writers have the opportunity to explore a knotty issue that concerns them for ninety minutes or more, and even average box office fodder can reveal layers you’d be amazed to discover in much of what washes up on the small screen.

Take Guy Ritchie’s version of Sherlock Holmes. At first glance it’s a geezerish twist on Baker Street’s most famous resident, with the great detective frequently bare chested and indulging in fisticuffs with a variety of ne’er-do-wells. Scratch the surface and there’s a lot more going on — which is what I’d hope for given that five writers are credited with devising and scripting the screenplay.

A couple of — related — points demonstrate the kind of thinking that went into making Ritchie’s Sherlock the most interesting film of an otherwise overhyped career. First, what’s the essence of Holmes? Well, the detective’s much-vaunted intellect has to be a big part of the answer to that question. So, one thing that makes sense is to pit him against a non-rational opponent. Which is what we get in the form of a seemingly resurrected aristocrat who allegedly traffics with demons.

Think bigger. OK, Holmes is a fin-de-siecle hero, and what characterises the spirit of his age? Well, it’s a time when Darwin and Marx have advanced the cause of intellect, both thinkers challenging the hold of religion and superstition. Too, the Industrial Revoluition has changed the lives of all, whether through uprooting rural dwellers to cities, or changing family structures for all.

So, how about an antagonist that embodies the forces of change sweeping through the country as it edges towards the twentieth century? Sounds good, and that’s exactly what the writers came up with. The necromantic aristo is emblematic of the shift from a spiritual to a scientific worldview, claiming supernatural powers with which he intends to acquire real political clout. And he nearly does too, brewing up a venomous toxin intended to despatch any MPs who are against him, and lying that the forces of darkness are involved.

It’s all neatly done, and with the smokescreen of a confrontation on an unfinished Tower Bridge, order is restored in the nick of time and a sequel involving Moriarty neatly set up. The alert viewer will note that the depiction of the baddy very much prefigures the rise of fascism in the twentieth century, the sort of effect a writer (or writers) can pull off when given a bigger canvas to work on than those presented by a witless tv soap.

Where film writers can shape their work with theme, tv writers are often limited to a few building blocks which need to be put in different permutations again and again for there to be any sense of novelty for the viewer. Which isn’t intended to be a sleight against those who write for tv, but an observation about the effect of working for a series script editor who is up against all kinds of constraints. And while there is tv that challenges my generalisation there, I’d on the whole much rather write for film because of the scope it presents.

There are some details that cement a film to a particular culture or worldview, even if there was every intent on the part of the filmmakers to create something for everyone. In the delightful Toy Story 3 it’s the fact that, in climbing up to a toilet seat, one of the characters first puts a piece of toilet paper onto it. There’s something very American about that, an exaggerated concern for health and hygiene that comes from a country where advertisers have succeeded in making the public paranoid about even the possibility of germs.

Often, it’s what goes into us rather than what comes out of us that makes for culturally revealing film scenes. Where would Italian American family gatherings be without lavish attention to the food prepared by mama? Meals are part of the fabric that binds families of all sorts together. There’s a warmth and pervasive reinforcement of social roles with Italian American eating in particular — Scorsese’s films are full of that kind of detail. It’s easier to get someone to do a hit when you’ve filled them with home made pasta and a fabulous ragu first.

Food is universal. Seeing how people eat and drink helps to understand even supposedly alien cultures. Tampopo is the glorious story of a Japanese widow who is aided in her quest to run a successful noodle bar by a truck driver and his friends. Food is part of sex play, and part of everyone’s routine — an old lady becomes the bane of a shopkeeper’s life by the simple act of squeezing his vegetables.

When a filmmaker wants to convey the otherness of a non-human species, food is a common first port of call. In Dark Crystal, looming gothic creatures impale small scurrying ones with surgically precise cutlery in a banquet scene. The prawn-like aliens in District 9 have a thing for cat food. And leave it to the Klingons to drink blood wine accompanied by a side of gagh: living worms.

Food is just one signifier that says a lot about a culture. The Market: A Tale Of Trade depicts what happens when a Turkish would-be wheeler dealer tries to get into the mobile phone market in the nineties as the first network reaches his area. There’s a great dichotomy depicted by two simple scenes: an old lady determined not to let phone engineers plant an ariel on her land, and the hero — unconvinced about phones at this point — being swayed by greed as he hears how young people in other parts of Turkey are going crazy for them.

A film about someone cheating on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? could have been made about Major Charles Ingram, and it could have been an interesting tale full of suppressed greed and very British stuff about class. Setting it in Mumbai was a stroke of genius, and Slumdog Millionaire became a much bigger success than a British equivalent could ever have been, for the way it opened up contemporary Indian society to a mainstream audience that had never seen and heard one of the world’s most exciting cities.

Through being able to capture visual nuances of every sort, from patterns on clothes to what’s growing in someone’s garden, facial expressions to the way a child puts her shoes on, film is uniquely capable of depicting how different people live, responding to each other and their environment. In difference there is richness, and from it we see through new eyes and learn more about the world we share.

All of the projects I am working on seek in part to depict worlds that will, to a greater or lesser degree, be new to the majority of viewers. In writing about homelessness, criminal behaviour, the experience of being psychotic, what London is like through the eyes of young people from somewhere else, I’m hoping that audiences will respond with the same fascination that I did when I discovered the differences that captivate me.

Interesting the way a detail can work in different films. In Die Hard, Bruce Willis is a ridiculously tough hero, able to stand in rooms with a bunch of bad guys blasting bullets at him and leave them unscathed. The signifier for his essential humanity is the way his feet get cut by broken glass — the only time in the film he suffers injury.

Contrarily, we have Jodie Foster in Panic Room. Moved into a new place with her daughter, she’s very much vulnerable when the film kicks off. But as the story develops, and her daughter is threatened, she walks barefoot through a room with broken glass and, in full heroic mode at this point, is not troubled by pointy bits.

Some people are sniffy about Panic Room. Director David Fincher’s previous film was Fight Club, and its nebulous political satire suggested to some that Fincher was a man with something to say. Well, maybe, but that’s quite the burden to be shouldered with, and taking your own publicity seriously can lead to creative missteps — see what happened with David O. Russell and the dismal self-consciously meaningful I Heart Huckabees after the wonder that was Three Kings.

Panic Room is unashamedly a thriller, and a reminder of why Alfred Hitchcock spent his career at perfecting the form. The technical and storytelling chops needed to pull off an effective thriller mark out a director as being able to master any yarn they have an urge to tell.

There’s something of a sneer in the term ‘thriller’. The implication is that being thrilled is a baseline emotion, not as sophisticated as the delights of reflection, insight, or ennui, that other less physically active films seek to evoke. But really, thrillers go back to the roots of cinema, when audiences paid to be startled by fight scenes, daredevil tricks, and ladies strapped down in front of oncoming trains. Why not go further back still, to cave paintings, when bison would be depicted in an attempt to conjure them, and people would get excited and scared by the prospect of hunting for meat to feed the tribe.

That tribal sense is very much there in Panic Room. A mother and daughter are menaced by intruders, and rely on a safe room in the house to see them through. Only, mum is claustrophobic — and the daughter has diabetes, meaning sooner or later mum is going to have to leave the safety of the panic room to get her daughter’s insulin from elsewhere in the house.

Sure, the film thrives on technical excellence — bravura tracking shots through the house, sublime editing to get across what happens when mum leaves the room and the invaders try to get there ahead of her return, inventive ways to use the basic rules of the panic room itself. But none of that would mean a thing without the primal connection of mother and child. Bad people are trying to take Jodie Foster’s baby away from her, and nothing but nothing will get between them.

That bottom line is important to bear in mind. It’s easy to get lost in convoluted plotting and subtle motivations. But for real involving narrative, nothing beats tapping into fundamental emotions. For all his whizzbang tricks, David Fincher really gets that point, and everything in the film stems from that realisation.

Panic Room is a reminder of the visceral power of a straight line narrative where the stakes get higher and situations are reversed. I have yet to accomplish that feat in any of my writing, and seeing as I aspire to write quality thrillers, watching Panic Room again was a salutary reminder of how that job can be done with real flair and finesse.

You certainly can’t fault Christopher Nolan’s ambition. If anything, his intellectual ambition exceeds his reach. Memento was without a doubt clever but lacking something at a vital emotional level. His Batman films arguably up the IQ of the source material, perhaps in embarrassment — that whole business with the Joker using Gotham City to enact principles from game theory was rather laboured. And now we have Inception and…well, what do we have exactly?

OK, so Leonardo DiCaprio can enter peoples’ dreams, and normally does so to burgle information. Only, on this occasion, he’s been hired instead to plant an idea, in the hope that the son of a dying industrialist will break up his dad’s monopolistic energy empire. Which, you’ve got to admit, is quite the audacious concept. And Leonardo is supported in this act of inception by a pretty glam international team, in a riff on the heist movie that is itself a fairly intellectual conceit.

The bottom line problem is establishing rules for the dreamworld that the crew enter. Problem being, films need such boundaries for the audience to feel satisfied and not shortchanged, whereas I’m not at all sure my dreams have the kind of internal coherence and consistency that is the desired state of the dreamburglars. Sure, there is the potential of chaos in the dream realm, but usually it’s safely at bay, and instead the crew can exercise their skills in architect-designed inner environments that are certainly impressive, but don’t really feel like dreams to me.

The dreams in the films are certainly visually striking, but they’re cut from the cloth of mainstream thrillers. I don’t know about you, but I don’t dream in genres that often. Sure, there’s the occasional chase sequence or romcom moment, but the chase is likely to be perpetrated by lifesize plastic butchers from outside shops, and the long awaited kiss is with someone who turns out to be an orang utan. That’s how it is for me and many people anyway, so it’s clear that the principle reason for the dreams in Inception resembling thrillers is solidly commercial.

Which makes sense. The film has had hundreds of millions of dollars spent on it, and that money needs to be recouped. It’s a safe bet that the reason for studios risking their money on Inception goes along the lines of ‘Chrisopher Nolan makes his Matrix‘. And, you know, if he had done, I’d be up there applauding him.

But Inception has nothing like the power of The Matrix. Sure, it’s got an element of headfuckery about it — but it’s not nearly as exciting as the clear central metaphor that Keanu found himself faced with when he was offered a red or blue pill and entered into a Gnostic battle in which he was the hero. And, annoying though the intellectual aspects of the film might be, The Matrix was a good sight more interesting in that regard than Inception is.

All of which is rather a shame, since the raw idea of Inception is rather fabulous. But — like much of Nolan’s work — it succeeds more as spectacle than as emotionally engrossing story. Sure, there’s stuff here you really should care about. Particularly when you get to grips with DiCaprio’s dead wife, who lives on in his dreams and wants him to stay there with her. But she and the script are flat out not compelling. You shouldn’t need to be told this stuff — you should feel it, and I didn’t.

I suspect the key to Inception’s failure is seen early on. We get to visit the places that were special to the former Mrs DiCaprio when the two were married. We’re told that they liked the folksy human scale place where they started, and were just as attracted to a cold empty modernist office block of a place. Maybe if I got why people would like the latter I’d find myself more attracted to Inception. But I don’t, and I’m not.

So, that’s what football is about. The appeal of depositing a leather sphere into a goalmouth has never really been made clear to me. Growing up, I got the imprints about alcohol, girls, and drugs more or less sorted, but cars and sport were always a lost cause for me. I enjoy swimming, and have been known to knock a shuttlecock over a net, but that’s as far as it goes.

The idea of watching a film about football might seem baffling then. But I’d heard good things about The Damned United from people whose opinions I respect. Besides, it’s written by Peter Morgan, who among other reality based dramas is responsible for The Queen, which I thought was excellent. So, more reason to view. Besides which — for those who read the last entry — my father remains in hospital in a bad way, and distractions like tv and blogging are welcome.

Anyway, the story concerns male relationships, which is interesting stuff. And when you’ve got a protagonist as rich as Brian Clough, there’s no excuse for making a bad script. And Morgan’s is quite the opposite. Clough is a fascinating man, whose different aspects are perhaps paradoxical at first sight. He’s an egotist who brings the best out of others. A man with a thick skin who bears grudges — most especially against Leeds manager Don Revie. A singular talent reliant on a sidekick, in the form of Peter Taylor.

The double act of Clough and Taylor is what the film is about. It’s set in the 44 day period when Clough managed Leeds, having done a sterling job at bringing Derby up from the arse end of the second division with Taylor to talent spot unlikely but perfect players for him. Taylor understands the big picture and dynamics in a way that Clough doesn’t. For his part, Clough has an extraordinary ability to coax winning performances from his team through playing psychological jitsui with them.

It makes for gripping drama, Clough doing wonders at Derby and then losing it all in a feat of brinksmanship that sees him and Taylor heading to Brighton when Clough foolhardily offers his and Taylor’s resignation and the chairman uses the opportunity to rid himself of trouble. Clough’s ego is monumental, but it needs to be to drive eleven men to perform to their best, and to deal with the backstage politics behind it all.

Anyway, it’s not long before Clough is at Leeds — but without Taylor at his side. The players don’t take to him. His take is that they’ve only won as many games as they have because they play dirty. His job is to maintain the track record, but get the players to clean up their acts so they can feel good about what they’re doing.

It’s an uphill struggle. The Leeds players see no reason to change their hack and slash tactics, and don’t take kindly to Clough bringing in new blood to the team — choices that maybe he wouldn’t have made if Taylor were still his right hand man. It all goes horribly wrong, which is why Clough lasts just over six weeks at the Leeds ground.

Like I say, I don’t get football. But I get people. And this is a film about people in conflict whether they need to be or not. Clough’s willing to bring the fight to anyone, and not always wisely. His ambition needs to be tempered with Taylor’s genius for team chemistry. And ultimately the two get together again to fight another day — the film rightly concentrates on the period of Clough and Taylor’s fallout, before their ascension with Nottingham Forest, who they bring to unparalleled glory thanks to their unbeatable dynamic.

A little while back, I looked at the theological aspects of how Ashes to Ashes, Lost, and Battlestar Galactica wrapped up. Now, with the conclusion of Matt Smith’s first season as the Gallifreyan gadabout, it’s worth having a look at how Dr Who functions — and its resonance with one of my favourite films, Donnie Darko.

Under Stephen Moffat’s stewardship, Dr Who has been a more successfully integrated series than it was under the guidance of Russell T Davies. Where Russell unified the show was in its themes, and particularly its vision of a future in which polychromatic polymorphous perversity would hold sway over the universe like a camp tentacled version of a Benetton ad. Evil was narrow minded, fearful of diversity, and good would triumph through the power of love.

All lovely stuff, but it got a bit repetitious, and there was rather a lot of handwaving at the expense of credible story detail. Which is what makes Moffat’s approach so interesting, and different. Admittedly, some of the individual episodes — Moffat’s in particular — weren’t as strong as they could have been. But the threads connecting them have really demonstrated the time and space spanning nature of the Doctor’s adventures in a way that the series hasn’t seen before.

As with RTD’s use of Rose Tyler, Moffat’s championing of new companion Amy Pond has been at the heart of the show. More than was the case in days of old, companions provide the critical human dimension to stories that could otherwise be abstract, especially for a show that is — let us remember — rightly aimed at a family audience.

Interesting that there’s been a tonal shift too: under RTD, there was quite a bit of playing to the gallery in the form of farting monsters and other playground-friendly stuff. With Moffat, the connection with children is at the heart of the series in a fundamentally serious way, through the business of why exactly young Amy Pond was living in a house on her own when the Doctor first encountered her. And ultimately it’s through the imagination, memory, and stubbornness of Amy that the series reaches its triumphant conclusion.

What connects Donnie Darko with this series of Dr Who is none other than Jesus Christ. All three sacrifice their lives that we may progress in our own. Which is pretty big stuff for stories aimed at young people, and appropriately so. Kids have a natural fascination with matters of philosophy, and when they’re captured in story form the effect can be very powerful indeed.

There’s even more similarity between Donnie and the Doctor at first glance, when you realise that both intend to sacrifice themselves with the world being none the wiser. Both are more than willing to make that sacrifice, but the distinction between the two is that while Donnie fills that Christ template pretty well, the Doctor has more than a little of the trickster about his make-up.

That trickster element is why the Doctor’s enemies line up to have him incarcerated in the Pandorica — the Doctor not recognising in the description of its captive as the most dangerous being in the universe a description of himself. And it’s that same trickster pluck which gives him the solution to the apocalyptic conundrum that results: he knows that Amy has the capacity to will him back into existence through the elaborate thread that he weaves through her life.

And really, that’s the difference between Donnie and the Doctor — the teenager has humility, where the old man from Gallifrey has the desire to see even more of space and time as he adventures another day, setting off in the TARDIS on another madcap quest like nothing has happened as he whisks Amy and her beau away from their wedding and into the beyond…

Now that’s what I call a good day.

First, I call a contact who spent a very productive day some weeks back coaching myself and co-conspirator Andy Tudor about our slowly simmering multi-platform project for younger viewers. We had a good chat, I confirmed that we were on track for meeting the deadlines we’d agreed…and she dropped a bombshell. Only, bombshells have unpleasant connotations whereas this news was very good indeed: she indicated her readiness to invest a four figure sum in the project, so convinced is she by its creativity, credibility, and our ability to work as a team. Gosh.

This offer came totally out of left field: Andy and I are aware that we need backers, but we’ve been concentrating up till now on getting the work done. The next milestone is getting a project bible together and having it trademarked by a firm of very cool media lawyers in London. Which is one relevant example of where it’s helpful to have someone backing you to the tune of a four figure sum. There will be many others on this particular road.

That was all sorted by 11am, so it seemed wise to go with the flow and get some writing done. And I’ve — finally — completed a script that means a lot to me, and a few people have already expressed an interest in having heard the basic concept. It’s inspired by my experiences in a mental hospital, when I was sectioned there some years back. But, honest, it’s not a pity-me biographical piece. Not remotely. I instead used the pieces of what happened, to create a…well, I still don’t know what to call it exactly. A gnostic pyschodrama? Sounds good, even if I’m not sure what one of those is. Let’s stick with it for now.

What I can tell you is that it’s called The Devil You Know, and it’s about a cop who cracks while he’s undercover, obsessed by one particular bad guy. When he’s sectioned, and allowed out into the community, he meets a woman he gets on with. They arrange to meet again — but she’s killed. And he’s convinced that the bad guy is responsible. What follows is partly his journey towards accepting that his obsession is bogus. But it’s also about an internal transformation: having failed to achieve what he set out to do, what does he need to become in order to succeed, and is there a penalty to pay for that success?

Sounds fun, huh? Well, it’s pretty dark and intense in places. But there are glimpses of humour and humanity too. Each sheds light on the other. And I’m very proud of it. I wanted to write about the experience of psychosis and have a positive outcome to the protagonist’s experiences, since that’s my own experience. There’s more than enough grim stuff concerning mental health out there already: I’m not at all one for claiming to speak on behalf of a community, but I wanted to make my own feelings clear, even if the story they’re attached to has little to do with my own hospital stay.

So, completing The Devil You Know is a bit of a victory for me. I’m very happy with the way the script has turned out, and have sent copies to several trusted readers. In due course, with rewrites, it’ll become part of a package that’ll hopefully secure me an agent. I’ve deliberately avoided that until now, since I wanted to have not just any old script portfolio, but one which represents me at my very best. And I now have that selection, with which I hope to make some steps forward in the months to come.

So, we’ve had a brief look at stories that stress the individual versus the collective, and the individual against the state. Another class of interactions is all to do with the individual who makes their own way in the world — and may be inclined to toss you a bone if you fall in line with their goals. This is the domain of the deal maker, the hustler, the mercurial figure who always seems to come out on top, even if they’re hankering after an even bigger score.

It’s an archetype that has a particular appeal to filmmakers, since it’s the one that has most resonance with what it’s like to conjure a film into existence. I got an insight into how this worked with a director I worked with years ago, who — when I commented that he must be tempted to shout at people sometimes — confidently stated that he got what he wanted without raising his voice. He did too, pulling off all manner of deals from getting a modestly budgeted short shot on 35mm to persuading a well known actor to play a key role in it in his days off from a feature being shot 200 miles away. I spent a day in the production office, stacked full of cans of fizzy drink and crisps as the result of some or other sponsorship arrangement. Sponsoring who, for what, I wondered…a question that was never truly resolved — but the food and drink was welcome on set.

It’s not far from such shenanigans to the heist movie, which I’m convinced filmmakers like because pulling off a heist is an artform close to their own. Look at what’s going on in Ocean’s Eleven and there’s an aura of smugness that comes from people being selfconsciously hip — the same toecurling vibe that afflicts some of the scenes in Swingers, itself all to do with wannabe-cool dudes getting what they want in their very narrow version of life.

In a more mature form, this world of deals and getting ahead is examined in Michael Clayton, Up In The Air and Glengarry Glen Ross. Those stories explore the personal cost of looking to be one up all the time, of edging forward without having a more holistic view of the world that helps characters realise the essential poverty of what they’re engaged in. You could say it’s a theme of Clooney’s, who features in the first two of those films — it’s a dilemma he recognises personally, and has resolved by investing in socially conscious projects like Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck alongside those that make the most of his matinee idol looks.

Not that such characters and stories are restricted to the here and now. Where would Star Wars be without the swagger that Han Solo brings to the story? He’s the urban fox to Luke’s farm boy, and that dynamic is a powerful one — especially when you slap an impressionable young princess in the middle of it. Legal dramas occupy this space to some extent too, at least where the wiliness of the law professionals is emphasised. And there are, of course, hybrids with the other templates we’ve looked at: Phil Silvers as Sgt Bilko up against the rigid rules of the army makes me laugh like few other tv comedies, and some of Woody Allen’s work is about what happens when fast talkers come up against more rooted family structures.

Whatever permutations you can think of, someone will have got there first. But that’s not the point. The idea is that these archetypes can help you develop your story to get the most out of it. To exploit the potential of a religious community setting, a character who likes to get her own way and now inhabits a situation where those impulses have legal consequences…whatever the dynamic, thinking about the way it plays out in the framework explored in these last three posts will — hopefully — be of benefit.

Last time, the focus was on how an individual deals with tribal groups. And that covers a lot of drama — where would soap operas be without conflict between individual and family? It’s a theme that goes back deep in world literature, and no wonder.

A more recent development is a function of industrial society: the rise of the regulated state. Kafka wouldn’t have been able to spin his tales of the machinations of the state without working for an insurance company. The Trial and The Castle are idea-led stories, but there are more visceral narratives to come out of the conflict between individual and government.

Where would your average urban police thriller be without a shouty black captain trying to keep a maverick cop in line, said line being drawn by the assholes in City Hall? There’s a fundamental distinction between community and society, and it’s all about size. A community can regulate itself through subtle influence from its members against those who would take advantage of it. A society consists of communities rubbing alongside one another, needing a consistent regulatory framework to control the behaviour of all.

It’s an impossible task, of course. The subtleties with which a family or religious group deals with wayward members cannot possibly be codified into black and white. But that’s what happens, and the consequence is the emergence of narratives which celebrate the triumph of the individual against the system. Catch-22 is one famous example, and rightly so, Heller’s novel outlining how individuals can triumph against the insanity of the rules that seek to contain them in times of war.

In film, Cool Hand Luke is a classic story about a rebel with a cause, one man up against the bullshit that society throws his way. As societies develop, become more sophisticated, it’s no surprise that there’s a place for a new breed of hero who can stand up to the system. The rise of hackers as heroes is one interesting example — where they were baddies in an earlier generation of thrillers, and then edgy renegade characters akin to the counterculture good guys of Easy Rider, by the time of Firewall even respectable geezers like Harrison Ford get to defend their families by using hacking skills to turn the tables on the badasses who threaten his nearest and dearest.

Project that forward into science fiction movies, and the central metaphor of The Matrix is one of hacking: reality itself is a programme that the savvy can turn to their advantage. Hot damn: bet you wish you’d paid more attention to computing at school, especially since you can’t even use your iPhone properly. In the future then, you can play the system against itself — a trick exploited beautifully in Robocop when one of the bad guys is sacked from the board, so that the Ed-209 robot which has been protecting him can now make him eat hot lead death.

Alternately, you can learn to ignore the rigid strictures of The Man and just, you know, do your own thing. Which is where the ending of the original Star Wars film comes from: Luke eschews the use of the computer mounted in his helmet to take the Death Star down guided by The Force, mysticism trumping rules-based thinking. (At least until the second trilogy, with its turgid revelation that The Force is associated with midichlorians, which takes us all the way back to school biology lessons and rules-based guff.)

Thankfully, humans seem to win in these showdowns with the overly programmed. Another example comes in the interaction of the astronaut Dave Bowman with computer HAL in 2001. When HAL turns on the people it’s meant to serve, Bowman has to act against the machine in order to achieve a mystical union at the climax of the film. All of which confirms that, cool as machines are, you need your heroes to be even cooler for an audience to really be moved by your story.

Oh, I really did want to like The Losers. In its comic form, by writer Andy Diggle and artist Jock, it was a lethal cocktail of action and politics, the two threaded together with real expertise as an all-too-plausible story about CIA skulduggery unfolds. And as I recounted recently, the opening pages of the screenplay by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt were more than promising. So what went wrong?

The opening sequence was a clue. After admiring the tautness of the screenplay version, what’s onscreen adds an unnecessary layer of cutesiness — there were already kids involved, and their presence provided the protagonists with a chance to demonstrate they have a moral compass. That’s all that was needed. Adding aspartame (the nasty sweetener used in many diet products) to that scene underlines that the film comes to us direct from Hollywood, and director Sylvain White, whose CV also includes an installment in the I Have Some Idea What You Got Up To Last Summer sequence, and Stomp The Yard, in which a young dancer’s street moves save the day for…oh, it’s too depressing to contemplate.

Maybe I’m particular conscious of how this stuff works having seen it so expertly played up in Herzog’s superb Bad Lieutenant. In that review I drew attention to ‘maverick’ meaning ‘two days stubble and a preference for classic cars’, and that’s exactly what happens when grizzled team leader Clay gets to drive at some point when they’re after badboy Max, in an old yellow banger that petrolheads get excited by. Hey ho.

Which isn’t to say that The Losers isn’t enjoyable at some levels. In a fairly vacuous way it does deliver kinetic thrills that you’ve more or less seen before, with rapid action against colour saturated backgrounds across the world. And it does that thing which is hard to dislike where you get a group of guys under pressure and they get jokier the more life-threatening things become for them. There’s a level at which that kind of thing is fun — witness the end of The Italian Job, when the coach is perched on a cliff edge, and a laddish chorus of ‘This Is The Self Preservation Society’ kicks in. Mind you, that’s pointing to the limits of such bloky bonding in a gentle fashion. Push the matiness much further and it becomes like those hateful Carling ads, where groups of guys turn down chances for life-transforming experiences because they’re sticking up for the one who’s inappropriately dressed, smelly, or a BNP member.

Would it surprise you if I say all this is delivered to a soundtrack that appropriates some hoary old rock classics and repurposes them, as AC/DC’s back catalogue was utilised for Iron Man 2, and Glee does much more playfully in tv form? That kind of thing is par for the course these days, and that’s an expression that applies more generally to The Losers. It’s not that it’s an especially bad film, just that it brings nothing new to the table, which considering the source material did do — at least by mainstream comics standards (Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Brought To Light is the real mould breaker, from some twenty years ago) — is a real shame.

Does every movie need to be innovative? Well, it’d be nice if more movies at least dabbled with originality. The biggest and saddest problem with The Losers is there seems little to distinguish it from the forthcoming big screen version of The A Team. And all the irony in the world can’t disguise the fact that the adventures of Mr T and his chums were a crock of shit on telly then, and if they’re any better now, it’s only because of the application of the same Hollywood blanderiser that’s taken the cojones from The Losers.