Survivor

What makes Survivor bad, first and foremost, is its pedestrian script. But what makes it worse is that a potentially intriguing concept is squandered in the process.

This espionage thriller from director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) focuses on the heightened stakes in the age of modern terrorism, when paranoia and common sense sometimes clash. Yet such territory is given a clichéd treatment that lacks insight and suspense.

As the film opens, Kate (Milla Jovovich) is a highly respected State Department investigator whose new job at the U.S. Embassy in London includes denying visas for potential terrorists. Her snooping isn’t looked upon favorably by some of her colleagues, however, who have taken some bribes and cut some deals to look the other way.

After a restaurant bombing that kills her supervisor (Robert Forster) and brings her into contact with a ruthless assassin (Pierce Brosnan) with plenty of criminal ties, Kate is discredited and framed as a rogue agent. She’s forced to go on the run to clear her own name while still trying to stop a major upcoming attack that only she seems to know anything about.

In fairness, there’s some moderate tension in some of the behind-the-scenes power struggles and some of the bureaucratic and political complications that tend to interfere with investigations and such, but rookie screenwriter Philip Shelby ditches that angle in favor of vigilante chases and gratuitous pyrotechnics. He even shamelessly tosses around some 9-11 references as a cheap emotional ploy.

It should be more fun to see Brosnan play a sharpshooting villain who blows up high-rise hotels for target practice, although his character lacks depth like many of his counterparts, making the delineation between heroes and villains pretty obvious. Other than Kate, almost everyone else is either corrupt or suspicious.

Jovovich shows some charisma as a character who’s both elusive and resilient, even though Kate’s sterling resume doesn’t include anything about parkour or hand-to-hand combat.

At any rate, Survivor takes a pessimistic view of the current state of international diplomacy, which might be provocative if the globetrotting film wasn’t so aggressively ridiculous, especially in its contrived climax. The result winds up as generic as its title.

Rated R, 96 minutes.