NIGHT HUNTER ★★ (Cert 15, 97mins)

FORMER Superman Henry Cavill crashes to earth in a creaky cop drama.

He swaps his spandex and kiss curl for a tatty jumper and straggly mop to play a posh and inexplicably English detective who, for some reason, has been hunting serial killers in snowy Minnesota.

Marshall, we are told, is a brilliant detective thanks to his ability to get into the mind of psychos.

As is often the case, this has played havoc with his personal life. His wife has left him, he’s rude to colleagues and is distant with his daughter. I think Cavill is trying to play tortured but he mostly comes across as bored.

Marshall’s new case involves a serial kidnapper who targets young girls and deafens them for no apparent reason.

Early on he meets Cooper, a judge turned vigilante (Ben Kingsley) who has been using a young female partner, a pervert-tracking computer and a DIY castration kit to bait, snare and neuter paedophiles. What inspired this pretty drastic career change is never explained.

Instead of arresting him, the great detective makes him his partner.The decision pays off, leading Marshall to the serial killer’s lair where he finds the missing girls chained up and the nutcase wandering around in his underpants.

Genius profiler Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) deduces that raving Simon (Brendan Fletcher) isn’t right in the head. But when the police and their families become targets, Marshall begins to suspect Simon isn’t working alone.

Director David Raymond hobbles the tension by repeatedly, randomly, cutting between characters and plot strands.

The biggest mystery is why these actors signed up for this nonsense.