~ Posted by Nicholas Barber, September 30th 2013

Usually when you leave the cinema, there’s some room for debate. You may not have enjoyed the film you’ve just seen, but you can accept that other people will have had a better time, and they may even persuade you to change your mind. Every now and then, though, a film like "Runner Runner" comes along which effectively puts a stop to any such discussion. Even as you’re watching it, the film-makers themselves are insisting that it’s a turkey.

"Runner Runner" is an online-poker thriller (and sub-genres don’t get much more oxymoronic than that) starring Justin Timberlake, Gemma Arterton (both pictured) and Ben Affleck. As you wait and wait for the action to get underway, Timberlake’s voice-over tells you about gambling websites. Then it tells you about the expo which Timberlake is attending in Costa Rica. Then it tells you about the people he meets there. Then it tells you about the job he does for a shady tycoon. And so on and on. By the film’s halfway point, it’s obvious that the cutting-room floor must have been piled high with dialogue scenes which were edited out, and that Timberlake’s endless narration is there to paper over canyon-sized cracks in the story.

Later in "Runner Runner", major plot developments are consigned to phone conversations ("We found him. He was badly beaten, but he’s alive."), and intense confrontations between Timberlake and Arterton are reduced to montages—further signs that great chunks of the film weren’t fit for purpose. Finally, there’s the running time (91 minutes) which is suspiciously short for this brand of glossy international blockbuster. It’s another admission that much of the footage was deemed unusable—even compared to the stuff that actually made it into the final cut.

Long before the film is over, you find yourself in a weird situation. You’re not watching the characters any more. You’re watching the people behind the scenes, as they throw up their hands and say, "This isn’t working. You know it and we know it. Look at all the gaps. Listen to all that voice-over. We’ve salvaged things as best we can, but come on: it’s a dud." Instead of resenting the director and the producers, you end up feeling their pain.

Nicholas Barber is the film previewer for Intelligent Life. His recent posts for the Editors' Blog include Diana was never boringly nice and Bring back the green goo