An improbable murder plot that seems, well, improbable

Woody Allen's latest Anglophilic tragedy about family, duplicity and murder, Cassandra's Dream, is (Match) Point-less - there's not a believable character, nor line of convincing dialogue to be found.

Where Allen's Match Point grabbed you with its protagonist's desperate deeds - a social climber driven by a Dostoevskian fever of passion and prejudice - Cassandra's Dreams just tosses up a murderous scenario and expects you to buy the motives of its perpetrators, lock, stock and sailing boat.

The boat - which is called Cassandra's Dream, and was named after the greyhound on which one of the film's two brothers won a 60-to-1 dog-track wager - is a pretty skiff, indeed. Terry (Colin Farrell) and Ian (Ewan McGregor), a garage mechanic and a would-be investment mogul, respectively, are working-class blokes who long for something more. Something like their Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson), a Hollywood plastic surgeon, has. Wealth, mainly.

The boat is a start. And despite the ominous thrum of a Philip Glass score, things are rosy as Terry and his good-hearted girlfriend (Sally Hawkins) and Ian and his pretty coworker (Ashley Madekwe) - Ian manages his dad's restaurant - take an inaugural sail.

But then Ian meets a seductive actress, Angela (Hayley Atwell), stranded on the side of a country road. And then Terry, a compulsive gambler, gets in debt to the tune of 90,000 pounds. And then Uncle Howard shows up. Sure, he'll help Terry pay off the loan sharks, and, yes, he'll front Ian the money for a hotel and spa project in California, but there's a favor he needs doing. Can you please kill this ex-colleague of mine, Martin Burns (Phil Davis), because if you don't, he's going to ruin me?

Family comes first, right?

Terry and Ian gulp and stare, dumbfounded. They aren't thugs, but they're desperate. Slowly they come around to the idea. They map out the details of this horrible act, how to go about it, when to pull it off. There are snafus, of course, and soul-searching, and globs of guilt. But Allen, who steers his actors through the rather far-fetched proceedings with clipped precision and throwaway references to Greek tragedy and the violent nature of humankind, fails to drum up any genuine emotion.