Film review: The Expatriate (15)

Philipp Stölzl made an excellent mountaineering picture in North Face but has fallen head first off the cliff with this feeble and perfunctory action thriller.

The Expatriate joins a file of movies – Taken (Liam Neeson), Stolen (Nicolas Cage) – in which an ageing ex-CIA operative has to go after the goons who've kidnapped his teenaged daughter.

Here, it's Aaron Eckhart being chased around Antwerp and Brussels by a sinister corporation which has been eliminating its employees: an arms deal, a cover-up, the usual. Liana Liberato plays the daughter, and does pretty well considering the absurd hoops she must jump through once dad has revealed himself as a Bourne-again assassin.

Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) offers too little, too late as the CIA's Euro-expert charged with tracking Eckhart down. Arash Amel wrote the script, but there's nothing about its set-ups and reveals that a computer couldn't have handled just as ably.