10 Terrible Third Acts That Ruined Recent Movies

New action-thriller Retribution stars Liam Neeson as financier Matt Turner, who while driving his two kids to school receives an anonymous call informing him that his car is rigged with a bomb which will explode if he or his children attempt to leave their seats.

The confined high-concept is certainly workable enough - and a smart way to circumvent a 71-year-old Neeson's age - yet the periodic guilty pleasure thrills of that opening hour eventually collapse under the weight of an utterly leaden third reel.

At the end of act two, Turner's business partner Anders Muller (Matthew Modine) has his own car blown up by the unseen assailant. Yet given that Muller's death is curiously obscured by a passing train and Modine is the only other name actor in the movie, it's pretty easy to guess that he's actually the secret villain.

And indeed, that's precisely what we learn a short while later, when Muller unmasks and reveals that he faked his own death in order to frame Turner for the bombings so he could sneak away with a €208 million slush fund.

It's head-smackingly stupid stuff, and not in the fun, trashy way that the first two-thirds of the movie were. This was lazy and unimaginative enough to feel actively contemptuous of the audience and their apparent lack of intelligence.