Boy Kills World

There's a bit of the television series "Kung Fu" (no panda) to the start of this film as we see a young deaf/mute boy being intensively trained by a mysterious and highly-skilled shaman deep in the jungle. Why? Well it turns out that civilisation is being governed by the dastardly, seriously hammy, "Van Der Koy" family and that every year they round up their enemies and kill them all on live TV. Remind you of anything? Our nameless, muscle-bound, hero (Bill Skarsgård) has an axe to grind with them, and egged on by his mentor sets about wreaking revenge on them for killing his family. Sadly, there's nothing at all original throughout the rest of this pretty dull action thriller that relies too heavily on a slightly comedic narration (his thoughts) guiding us through some set-piece and repetitious combat scenes that after about fifteen minutes left us in no doubt as to the conclusion we were headed for. The more heavily armed soldiers you have guarding something, the easier it is for one man to... The arrival of Michelle Dockery and the sparingly used Famke Janssen add nothing at all, indeed the former is actually pretty terrible and doesn't become any more menacing just because she takes on a mid-Atlantic drawl. It's a fight/stunt co-ordinators' wet dream this film, but for the rest if us it's "Hunger Games" light. Very light.