Sienna Miller has been house-hunting in the US over the past week as she seeks to make her name on the other side of the pond. This week she tops the bill in new blockbuster GI Joe . . . has she got what it takes to make it in Tinseltown?

Well, she’s certainly not part of a movie masterpiece.

Take a piece of Batman, a slice of Lara Croft, a smidgen of Star Wars and a trickle of Terminator, and you get something resembling this – a by-the-numbers sci-fi saga which attempts to blend action, romance and comedy into the start of another long-running blockbuster franchise.

Arms dealer James McCullen (former Dr Who star Christopher Eccleston) has developed a super new “nanobyte missile” capable of destroying an entire city within seconds.

The US military orders four of them, but the consignment is ambushed en-route by a mysterious band of warriors led by the leather catsuit-clad Baroness (Sienna Miller).

For American soldier Duke (Channing Tatum), who had been among the team guarding the consignment with best pal Ripcord (Marlon Wayans), the attack is particularly troubling – because the mysterious Baroness used to be his fiancee.

Determined to help recover the missiles, Duke and Ripcord hook up with the top secret GI Joes, a crack team of fighters made up from the cream of the world’s military forces and headed by General Hawk (Quaid), who have an amazing arsenal of weaponry at their disposal.

GI Joe is a noisy, unsubtle, frenetically-edited wish fulfilment journey for gadget-loving teenagers, crammed with flaming vehicles, enormous explosions and enough huge hi-tech weaponry to give the Transformers a run for their money.

Considering that special effects account for such a sizeable proportion of the film, it’s surprising to find much of it isn’t particularly up to scratch, clumsily resembling comic-strip animation when it should be attempting to convince us we’re living in a real-life future.

Miller pouts and sashays her way through the carnage, letting her costumes do most of her talking, but like the rest of the cast she takes a back seat to the effects. In fact, only Tatum and Wayans manage to register any kind of human performance on the movie’s sizeable Richter scale.

Judging by the final reel, the team are desperate to be enlisted for a sequel. Whether this one earns enough money at the box office to convince a benevolent producer, though, will probably be touch and go.

For me, it’s a 6/10 . . . much like Miss Miller’s chances of making it in the Hollywood big-time.

Carl Jones