The Telegraph

Rushdie and Griffiths gravely agree that the consequences of this violence, sanctioned by zealotry, need to be seen and absorbed as widely as possible.

There is some seedy, slinky fun to be had, all capably styled by director Michael Showalter with a lurid Brian De Palma-like sheen.

Risky art is often called a high-wire act, but Tom Cruise’s latest film really earns the label. Until it took its very last step, I honestly couldn’t have told you whether it was going to come off or splat headfirst into the sawdust.

Its warmth builds like an ache, and is enriched both by the three wonderfully complementary lead performances, and by an astute parallel storyline in which teenage Sara experiences early romantic love.

With a string of plot contrivances that drive you spare, there isn’t a single believable moment in this film. I had no idea what the point of it was, for satirical kicks or otherwise. Gunning for dark laughs, it wins a handful that thinly reverberate, but the constant straining to be both stressful and funny is a deal-breaker.

Janus Metz Pedersen directs this procedural stuff watchably enough, and finds a saving grace in Shailene Woodley, who gives easily the most sure-footed performance, as Joanne Miller, the FBI profiler leading the charge.

Cregger’s attempt to reverse-engineer this cinematically influenced series into actual cinema is unquestionably better crafted than any of the seven that came before it – or 14, if you count the abortive 2022 Netflix series and occasional computer-generated animations. But its approach to the task is so relentlessly flippant that it feels like an extended joke at the expense of both the beloved franchise and video-gamers more broadly.

You feel a soulful connection between actor and animal that goes beyond performance; whenever one instinctively helps out the other, manly tears are liable to flow.

This is Austen with the bonnets blown off – and all the better for it.

No gag appears to have been deemed too abstract or daft for consideration, and I mean that as the highest compliment. When