Apparently Tyler Perry has decided to become an action star. This is a terrible idea, for many reasons, but Perry’s faithful audience is too tempting a demographic target for the studios to tell him no.

But Perry’s audience is used to flocking to see him wear a granny dress, or to watch polished romantic trifles with Morris Chestnutt and Sanaa Lathan and the like. It’s an open question whether the Perristas will have any interest in following him to the land of gunfire and slow-motion breaking glass.

I’ll say this for the man. He’s game. The effort is palpable. It’s unfortunate, but at this point, Perry doesn’t come across as an action hero.

The rumor is that the part was greenlit with Idris Elba. Now, had Elba played Alex Cross here, the screenplay still would have sucked, and the story would still have been a crowded cemetery of cliches, but Elba has enough screen charisma to paper over the worst of it.

Most action films are very light on dialogue, and they rely on the actors to convey a lot with their faces, their gestures. Perry’s pleasant, doughy face is not up to the task. In his closeups, we see a big guy playing dressup.

I think if Perry really wants to be an action star, he’s going to have to make his own vehicle. The moments that work for him here are the ones in his wheelhouse – humor and pathos that arises naturally out of family dynamics. There’s probably room for a gun-toting detective series about a tall, sad-eyed fella who’s rather be home having Scrabble night, but someone like Perry will have to write it.

It’s almost worth seeing if you’re a Lost fan. Matthew Fox plays the villain with some real gusto. He looks like Christian Bale in ‘The Machinist’ – all angles and sinews, eyes white on all four sides. It’s his bad luck that his character has to speak at all, because everything he gets to say is ludicrous.

The script is garbage, the lead is miscast, the villain’s crazy energy is wasted – ‘Alex Cross’ is a failure on all fronts, but it does make me imagine a different, better movie that could have been assembled out of its pieces.

On a slight tangent, the filmmakers clearly got compensated to pimp the city of Detroit – there are lingering shots of GM grilles, neon ‘Caddilac” signs and even a scene that takes place at a car show. This bullshit has to stop. If you take the money, take the time to place your products gently. I recognize that product placement is a financial reality, but it doesn’t have to be so lazy.