Man Down

Shia LaBeouf delivers a superb performance in a film that is otherwise misjudged on almost every level.

Once the smoke clears and the shock of its twists wears off, Man Down is even worse than it originally appears.

An uncomfortable blend of war movie, family drama and dystopian sci-fi.

The movie is fragmented enough from the word go, but plummets from such an insane height at the end that you want to rewind and hand everyone involved a personalised black-box recorder.

An oppressive cloud of macho self-pity hangs over this muddled and overwrought movie, which involves a cliched narrative device that is glib and unsatisfying.

This naff war fable with end-of-world curlicues is good only when LaBeouf fills the screen. His anguish, tears and poignant gropings to comprehend are moving and believable.

Something about LaBeouf's work here pulled me through every aspect of this wildly uneven film.

What's unfortunate is how the film's complex themes become casualties of the film's ultimate ineptitude.

MAN DOWN attempts to cram a murky mass of plot and emotion into an hour-and-a-half of screen time. In the process, little of its meaning survived, and we're left with an appalling film.

It's difficult to recommend this poorly-wrought war drama to anyone with 90 minutes to spare and literally anything else to do.