D-Tox

Sylvester Stallone is not a quitter, neither is he a slouch. Recently he's made bad choices, which encourages critics of a certain age to write him off as The Man Who Time Forgot.

He's trying so hard in D-Tox that veteran planks, such as Kris Kristofferson, appear closer to the spirit of the movie. One cliche deserves another and Scottish director Jim Gillespie piles them on. No one notices that Stallone is acting, because there is something in the script that precludes it.

FBI agent, Jack Malloy (Stallone), can't save his girlfriend (Dina Meyer) from a serial killer and instantly goes to pieces. While enduring out-of-focus flashbacks, he fills his days looking suicidal in a neighbourhood watering hole. Even worse than the booze, which he downs like prune juice, the poor fellow is seen with a fag in his face. It's so serious, his best pal (Charles S Dutton) chucks him into a Jeep and drives to Wyoming, where Doc (Kristofferson) runs a rehab centre for cops.

The weather is bad. The building resembles a nuclear bunker. The inmates don't behave like alcoholics until one of them starts bumping off the others. As the snow piles up outside and Nursey (Polly Walker) takes a fancy to Malloy, the scriptwriters commit hari-kari, leaving the movie up to its neck in hokum.

Meanwhile, Stallone continues to behave as if competing for an Academy Award, while all around him guys, such as Tom Berenger, Robert Patrick and Sean Patrick Flanery, are hamming it up outrageously. Despite suffering a sense-of-humour failure, The Man Who Wrote Rocky does not deserve to go down with a ship as leaky as this.