Catch .44

While Joseph Heller's Catch 22 entered public consciousness as the term for an unwinnable paradox, the title of this movie could become playground slang. "Your trainers are totally Catch .44," a bully might cruelly say. Here we have three gun-wielding beauties caught up in a drug deal double-cross within a modern western setting. Unfortunately this vanilla trio can't add the required measure of kick-ass danger to the cocktail, as Pam Grier or Reiko Ike exuded in the exploitation classics this film is in thrall to.

Forrest Whitaker's quirky assassin is the only piece of on-screen interest, and even he overplays his hand, bringing to mind Brando's bloated indulgence in The Missouri Breaks. While irredeemably derivative of Pulp Fiction in its dialogue, soundtrack and shuffled chronology, rather than describing Catch .44 as Tarantinoesque, it might be better to call it Hammondesque; a high speed car wreck that feels like it was made by the man who just crawled out of it. [Alan Bett]