Kiwi star Karl Urban's latest film mocked by critics

Karl Urban and Al Pacino on set.

Karl Urban's latest movie is poised to join a rarefied but undesirable Hollywood club.

The Kiwi stars in Hangman alongside Al Pacino and Brittany Snow.

Despite the lure of Oscar winner Pacino, the movie had yesterday earned a 0 per cent rating on critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Urban, who is on screen in Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok, plays a criminal profiler who teams up with Pacino's veteran homicide detective to catch a serial killer terrorising a city with a macabre version of the children's game hangman.

A critic for the Village Voice said: "You may not take a single frame of this movie seriously, especially whenever Pacino is shuffling around, waving a gun and talking like he's desperately in need of a mint julep."

Film critic Mark Dujsik lampooned the feature as "dull, dumb, and overly familiar".

Last year, director Johnny Martin said the film - which does not yet have a New Zealand release date - was "amazing and will appeal to a wide audience".

But the Hollywood Reporter's review opens: "Plenty of former A-list actors - including Bruce Willis, Nicolas Cage and Antonio Banderas - have succumbed to the lure of easy pay cheques in direct-to-video thrillers. But it's particularly disappointing to see Al Pacino sink to those depths."

By late last night the film had crept up to a 7 per cent rating - but the single digit rating still leaves it among an embarrassing roll of dishonour.

Other films with the unfortunate distinction include Adam Sandler's Netflix movie The Ridiculous 6, 2010's The Nutcracker in 3D, and the Saturday Night Fever sequel audiences did not ask for but got nonetheless, Staying Alive.