As a nation, we produce some of the world’s finest actresses, such as your Dench’s and Smith’s, but they don’t often go on to have global successes and star in big Hollywood blockbusters. Someone who did was Kate Beckinsale.

In 2003 she starred in the action film Underworld, about a world of vampires and werewolves, that spawned a further three films, four if you include 2009’s Underworld: Rise of the Lycans that featured her voice and archive material. It was the type of film franchise that announced Beckinsale to the world.

And yet despite its popularity, her career since hasn’t come close to achieving the same level of success.

So what do you do? Well, what seemed like a good idea – on paper at least – is star in a film from the director behind Taken, a film that completely redefined Liam Neeson’s career. So maybe he could the same for Beckinsale?

On a ‘work’ trip in Tokyo is Avery Graves (Beckinsale) – that’s what she’s told hubby David (Rupert Friend) at least. And it’s only a white lie, as it is for work, only he doesn’t know that she’s an agent for the CIA.

But someone else clearly does, because when she returns home, the place has been turned over and David is missing – you could even say he’s been ‘taken’.

She gets contacted by someone who says they have him, and she just has to do a job for them to get her husband back. It’s simple enough: to get a thumb drive with a file called ‘Canary Black’ on it, that has a list of some very prominent names on it, and information on them to blackmail them with it.

So with little choice, Avery sets about putting her very particular set of skills to the test, to save her husband.

You can often tell when people try too hard to replicate former success, because there’s an air of desperation about their work. And that’s most evident here from both star and director. Beckinsale may well think that her career could do with the Neeson effect, but the truth is so could Pierre Morel, whose own career has struggled since helming that particular 2008 hit.

This collaboration then is the very definition of a project trying too hard, so much so that the result is a pitiful, generic mess.

It’s essentially Taken meets 007, and yes, it’s just as lame as it sounds. You would imagine it would take what you think is a decent script to have the 51 year old actress take on such a physical role so deep into her career. And you get the sense looking at her, that she’s either signed a pact with the devil, or had some cosmetic work done to maintain a more youthful appearance. But the British actress is keen to refute such allegations, even going as far to allegedly consult with a plastic surgeon so that he can confirm that she has had no work done whatsoever. And even if she does look good for her age, however she’s gone about it, she just doesn’t fit an action hero.

She’s certainly not helped by a pathetic script, which could have been simply cut and pasted from various action films over the years, with the result being as choppy as it sounds. What it really is, is an insult to the audiences’ intelligence, by being so route one and embarrassingly unoriginal.

It even has the audacity to make a play for a further instalment in its closing scenes, which is nothing short of laughable.

The only good news for Beckinsale is that Neeson was 72 when he starred in Taken, so she has time on her side. But we suspect she’ll need more than luck getting an action role in her seventies. That said, our curiosity would get the better of us – more than it did here – and we would see it, let’s just hope that Morel isn’t directing it.

If you desperately need to see a Taken variant then you really are just better off watching the real deal, as this particular charlatan has no skills whatsoever.