WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH... CLIVE OWEN?

Moreover, the film distributors he keeps working with aren't helping his career.

Out of his last eight films, four have not been screened in advance to regional film critics.

Which means that in the cases of Shoot 'Em Up, Trust, Killer Elite and new film Intruders I've had to review than all a week late.

That's not good for the democracy and goodwill that's involved when punters are expected to paying good money to see movies.

Nor is it doing Owen any favours.

I was a big fan of Shoot 'Em Up (2007), but after the film's first weekend its box office was already on a hiding to nothing.

Last year, the same went for Trust (a fine film about the dangers of the internet) and Killer Elite (which could have been a straight to video disaster without the initially intriguing combination of Jason Statham, Owen and Robert De Niro).

Having seen Intruders today at AMC Broadway Plaza at Five Ways, Birmingham, I can reveal that I found it to be perfectly watchable if unoriginal and not at all scary for a horror/thriller.

I'll be giving it two stars when my full review appears in the Birmingham Mail on Friday, February 3.

Assuming, of course, that the distributors are even going to bother trying to keep it going in cinemas for a bit.

Who'd be an actor, eh. You put all of that work in and then get let down at the last minute.

It was the same with Liam Neeson's The Grey (15) which has also been quietly released this weekend.

This is another potentially ordinary seen-it-all-before film, but Neeson puts so much into it, you cannot but help enjoy the journey.

And he, too, deserved a press show before release just so that we could have talked it up a bit.

Come on, London.... help us to help you.