You can understand why Eddie Murphy was attracted to Metro, a 1997 crime thriller written by Randy Feldman and directed by Thomas Carter. While some of his recent comedy films had found commercial success – The Nutty Professor was an obvious example – he must have been feeling somewhat tired in terms of the performance work required of him. Look back to 1984 and his smash hit Beverly Hills Cop, which was a dramatic script reworked in production into a comedy, and you can find as much straight acting as humorous.

In theory it was potentially a smart move, but in practice it was simply a wall-to-wall misfire. Murphy clearly wants to make a more dramatically solid crime movie, somewhere in the territory of Dirty Harry. His character Scott Roper is a maverick police hostage negotiator, who thinks on his feet and breaks rules that get in the way of doing his job. At the same time Thomas Carter directs the film with a surfeit of gloomy alleyways and darkened corridors. Jump scares abound, and the film’s key antagonist – the jewel thief Michael Korda (Michael Wincott) – is treated more like a mid-90s serial killer than anything else. Throw in a rookie sidekick (Michael Rapaport) and the films gets infused with the sort of back-and-forth jokey patter typical of a buddy cop movie. These elements are all jumbled together, and when mixed they not so much blend as curdle. The film is too menacing to be a comedy, and too light-hearted to be a thriller. In between the screenplay is simply too moribund and formulaic to support anything worthwhile.

Caravan Pictures dived in and snatched Feldman’s screenplay off the market for roughly one million dollars, and it is difficult to fully comprehend why. As presented on screen it represents a hodge-podge of elements and stereotypes, with many more opportunities missed than captured. The film centres on a hostage negotiator, which is a profession seemingly hand-built for drama, but once the narrative gets going Roper’s day job essentially becomes irrelevant. Similarly the film introduces a generic back story about a slain former partner, which it then quietly sidelines: a neater film would simply slice out the entire subplot.

Michael Wincott is almost entirely wasted; even his characters in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and The Three Musketeers had more depth and more interesting qualities. Likewise Carmen Ejogo feels wasted: she has a lot of presence and energy, but spends much of the film either playing a victim role or being the reluctant ex-girlfriend whose affection are gradually polished up by Eddie Murphy’s constant ingratiation.

Comedic actors are generally very good at performing drama, and it is a shame that, overall, Eddie Murphy has never afforded himself the chance to fully demonstrate his own talents. Metro, well forgotten by most filmgoers by this point, is simply filler. It is not the worst two hours you will spend in your life, but you won’t ever get them back.