Fisherman’s tale of a plot that got away

SERENITY stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Mr McConaughey’s bare bottom, not always in that order.

He (and his bottom) play Baker Dill ( pictured), a rugged fishingboat captain on a tropical island, whose fiercest desire is to catch one particularly elusive tuna.

But then his ex-wife Karen (Hathaway, swapping her usual wholesome persona for a noirish femme fatale along the lines of Lauren Bacall or Jessica Rabbit) tracks him down in a bar.

She has a task for him; she wants him to kill her rich, abusive husband (Jason Clarke, in a role very different from the one he plays in another of this week’s releases, The Aftermath). That would be the story but for a twist involving Baker’s estranged son that I would describe as quirky, if only bonkers weren’t a much better word for it. The British writer-director Steven Knight has made better films than this, and films that treat women more generously. Here, they are all in supine thrall to dangerous, sweaty, alpha males. But he certainly can’t be accused of a lack of imagination.