'Cat Run' snips off appendages and other comic ploys

In the slick, puerile comedy thriller "Cat Run," the only saving grace (though an insult to the concept of grace) is Janet McTeer's deadpan portrayal of a lethal freelance "interrogator." McTeer's character, Helen Bingham, a prim torturer-for-hire, proudly wields a gadget that snips off noses, fingers and male genitalia. The final image in the movie's grisliest scene is a brief shot of a room drenched in blood and strewn with body parts after one of her question-and-answer sessions. Icy doesn't begin to describe the chill that sets in when this caricature of a cold English aristocrat appears in any scene, her eyes glinting with cruelty.

Otherwise, "Cat Run" is an incoherent hybrid of buddy movie, "Girls Gone Wild" episode and James Bond spoof that employs cheap cinematic tricks like multiple split screens for no apparent purpose. The opening scene, at a hotel in Montenegro where gangsters and corrupt politicians are frolicking with naked prostitutes, sets the lubricious tone of the movie, directed by John Stockwell from a screenplay by Nick Ball and John Niven.

The party-suite shenanigans, captured on video, are incriminating enough that when one of the prostitutes, Catalina (Paz Vega), flees with a hard drive, she is marked for death in a chase that carries her from one lush Eastern European setting to another. For much of the movie she is separated from her baby, who has a gun shoved in its mouth when it is discovered staying with Catalina's sister.

The buddy movie aspect of "Cat Run" involves Anthony (Scott Mechlowicz) and Julian (Alphonso McAuley, a cut-rate Eddie Murphy), American slackers abroad who are dragged into the mess after setting up a detective agency as a lark. They are joined by Dexter (D.L. Hughley), a multiple amputee whose remaining limb is severed by the indefatigable interrogator. The fun and games are accompanied by limp jokes. Sample: "We'll always have Angola."