Mortal Engines

(M) ★★★

Director: Christian Rivers.

Cast: Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving, Jihae, Leila George, Ronan Raftery, Stephen Lang, Patrick Malahide, Colin Salmon, Regé-Jean Page.

Kite-flying champion of the world, 253rd year running.

Big studios aren't searching for great films any more - they're searching for the next big franchise. Like the giant motorised cities of Mortal Engines, they roll around look for comic books, old TV shows and YA book series (preferably dystopian) to inhale and regurgitate as tentpole blockbusters.

But for every Harry Potter and Hunger Games, there is a Divergent and a Mortal Instruments (and quite a few others that don't even make it to the big screen). Mortal Engines, based on the novel of the same name by Philip Reeve, lands somewhere in the middle.

It's not terrible - in terms of spectacle it has some of the best of the year - but it lacks the heart, soul and style to make this anything more than a so-so standalone film unlikely to inspire the rabid fanbase required for a franchise.

Set in a distant dystopian future where cities roll around eating other cities (more on that in a minute), it follows a young woman named Hester Shaw (Hilmar) as she seeks vengeance on Thaddeus Valentine (Weaving) - the man who murdered her mother. When her assassination attempt on Valentine goes wrong thanks to the intervention of history buff Tom Natsworthy (Sheehan), Hester and Tom end up left for dead in the strange world that exists outside the motorised metropolises traversing the landscape.

Mortal Engines is an often infuriating mix of good and bad film-making. Its weird reality of "municipal Darwinism" and fascinating backstory is set up in intelligent ways but also ineptly clunky ways - one casual line works wonders to showcase the world we're in, but it's often backed up by some painfully dull exposition. There are stellar ideas poorly delivered, and silly ideas that look incredible. The script waivers between solid and dire, and the performance are okay, but never amazing.

It's this blend of diamonds and dirt that makes the whole thing a middling experience. There's never a spark to light the film, or rather when there is, a damp squib puts it out. It aspires to be a steam-punk Star Wars or a dystopian sci-fi epic with a mythology to match The Hunger Games but it rarely reaches such lofty heights.

It looks incredible (for the most part), and the opening sequence of a giant mobile London hunting down a small mining town is outstanding, even if these motorised metropolises make no functional sense (most people stopped being nomadic for many reasons thousands of years ago, let alone the unnecessary waste of energy required to propel a city around in order to "eat" other cities).

Obviously these tank-like mega-towns are not-hugely-realistic metaphors for mankind's propensity to devour the natural world, damn the costs. They are consumerism and industrialism run rampant, and on a couple of occasions the film's deeper ideas and bigger themes shine through the spectacle and dud lines. But it's not enough to give Mortal Engines the boost it desperately needs.

Stars Hilmar and Sheehan are adequate but lack chemistry, but then so does the whole film. It's missing a certain amount of style all round to stop it feeling so generic. A character like Jihae's Anna Fang has the potential to be iconic, but there's a lack of edge or x factor to make it all really sing. The best character is the mo-cap/CG creation Shrike, but his appearance is all-too-brief.

When it works, Mortal Engines hums like a well-tuned if slightly standard machine. But there are too many clunks, not enough spark in the belly, and a general blandness that stops it reaching the impressive heights it obviously aspires to.