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Had it been the first feature-length movie of a young director, shot in his basement, I would have been kinder. Absolutely nothing feels original or particularly unsettling. And it often feels like a DIY movie in more than one aspect: the heavy use of a repetitive musical background (a cliché for a producer at a loss for more impact) and the episodic nature of the scenes.

But it is produced by J. J. Abrams so this all loops back to all the downtrodden clichés of Lost and other derivative narratives so, well, that puts a lot of experience into dishing out clichés wrapped up with a consistent budget.

The novel is way up in the list of the most adapted works - especially if you filter out all the Draculas and Frankensteins that are just distant spinoffs rather than deadpan or spoofy adaptations of the original canvas - so one has to be extra creative to find something newer to tell while compressing the storyline under the 3h mark.

Believe it or not the first creative idea that came up in their bright minds was to patch up a long prologue! Actually the first few minutes take place before the actual start of the novel and it even adds a new character (horrendously played) because, hey, adapting the 600-page most famous revenge story is piece of cake so why not pepper this with some additional challenge?

OK. So we're off to a very slow and underwhelming start and Edmond Dantès eventually ends up at Château d'If after 30min. And now we can have our narrative ellipses: 4 years later, 10 years later... So we are there yet only a little bit rushed along - including one character not even properly introduced - but don't worry, the same cheap sentimentalism from the prologue is back to soak things up. Otherwise the revenge part properly transcribes Alexandre Dumas's narration without anything much of a brilliant high point.

In the end our (near super) hero is not entirely lost to the dark side in order to give us a sentimentalist epilogue, which also effectively makes for a very weak moral conclusion. And underwhelming impression, again.

Phoey Again, where was the talent in this? Same thing as with this "creative" team's previous Dumas mashup, in the corners, in the background. A little hidden in plain sight if you will because the set decoration and the costumes are certainly the work of excellent dedicated professionals. Make-up, hair-dressing ditto. But once and again not where it counts in the first place: script and direction. Which means the producing team were just self-satisfied with the idea of delivering whatever looked clean on the outside and pocket the easy win.

Now this adaptation only has its modern look for itself. Right from the start are recorded some of the worst (on-the-nose) dialogue I have been submitted to in a long time. Most characters speak with meek voices and utter weak lines that would make an adult film director cringe. Yes, indeed, only a couple of actors (and only one actress) do look good, the rest look and sound like soap opera sheep lost on the big soundstage.

You know this feeling when someone is trying too hard to look interesting and funny? He may get some laughs from the kids but the grown-ups will just think he is a buffoon. MI:5 doesn't try to be funny but the totally unrealistic action scenes - think superheroes movies - are boring from the get go.

And Tom Cruise sure does not look like a powerful hero. Stunts give his character a lot to do (including capacity to wake up quickly after whatever powerful hit) but he looks like he just woke up all along. Maybe he has done something to his face to fight the wrinkles and he is just playing with wax mask or maybe he is just as bored as me.

Action scenes unanchored in reality may look fine for those enjoying roller-coasters without the actual goosebumps, but they totally fail to create suspense and tension. It is just a visual choreography so the viewer just cannot suspend his disbelief: it is a show, there is a scene and there are tricks all along.

And since the action scenes are so dumb with their sole objective to be bigger than bigger than life, the script has a lot to slowly expose to elicit the beginning of something of a plot. So when the stunts are off, the actors talk and talk, and the script tries to be clever so they talk longer. Abysmal.

The only positive thing in this mess is Vanessa Kirby who puts to sleep every other actor loitering here.