It is not, thank goodness, often that something of The Hitcher's modest quality can claim to be only the fourth worst film released in a particular week.

But such things happen in the murky penumbra surrounding the launch of a Pirates of the Caribbeanflick.

Produced by the dread Michael Bay and directed by some pop-video bloke, this stupid thriller attempts to make something fresh out of a moderately entertaining Rutger Hauer vehicle from the distant Middle-earth that was 1986. One could imagine less worthwhile ambitions. Just.

The Hitcherachieves its relatively high status among the films reviewed in today's supplement by starting reasonably well. Two teenagers are driving along a rainy freeway when they suddenly happen upon a big, damp Sean Bean standing in the middle of the road.

After screeching round the towering Yorkshireman, the kids decide to leave him to his lurking and continue on their way. But Sean - who is, of course, a murderous psychopath - will not be so easily avoided. Everywhere they go, he goes too.

The first few grisly encounters are passably diverting. Indeed, the sequence where the female youth has to drive a carload of butchered middle-Americans to the nearest settlement is quite impressively disturbing.

But the more time passes the more Bean, initially just a bloke with a knife, begins to resemble some absurdly powerful demon from the Book of Revelations. Handcuffs fall from his wrists. Trucks spin into one another at his command. As the final act beckons, we half expect him to direct plagues of locusts at his pursuers.

Sadly, The Great Fiend Hitcher is played by a man better suited to roles where, malign, but not actually satanic, he is asked to scowl at urban strangers foolish enough to order Chardonnay in the Lamb and Hatchet.

Hang on, Sean. There's a remake of Straw Dogscoming our way soon. That should do you nicely.