The Virtuoso

Lethargic direction and bland acting drags down what could have been a decent neo-noir.

Michael Caine famously bought a new house with his fee for making Jaws 4. What Anthony Hopkins splashed out on after completing The Virtuoso remains unknown.

Too dumb to actually be any good and too dull to at least be entertainingly bad.

This is a committedly mediocre movie. The script reads like a rough draft that should be gathering dust.

"The Virtuoso" covers well-worn territory - the assassin story is almost a genre unto itself - and director Nick Stagliano, hampered by a predictable script, can't bring much new to the game.

When it's all over and the big twist you saw coming in the first 15 minutes has been revealed, you feel empty, a bit depressed, and like you need another cup of coffee.

The Virtuoso is meandering yet thin, big on mood and stylish direction from Stagliano but low on that most crucial of things – thrills.

Never fully settles on a tone, leaving it stranded in a no-man's-land in-between "intriguing genre exercise" and "fun genre parody."​

Theres really very little to recommend The Virtuoso, a film that contents itself with being a vague approximation of better films that have come before.

Like many assassins in many movies before this, The Virtuoso is the Killer Who Finds His Conscience, and we couldn't care less.