Connoisseurs of trashy action films will have hours of fun picking apart this lovably loopy detective thriller from pony-tailed pugilist Steven Seagal.

Comprehensively compiling every known cop cliché in the history of cinema, and mixing in several fist fights that look as if they were edited by a gang of wild chimps, Kill Switch is an action movie experience like no other.

Memphis police detective Jacob King (Seagal) is a hard-living maverick whose unconventional methods always land him in hot water with his superiors.

Whether he's throwing suspects out of windows or smashing their teeth all over local bars, King gets the job done - but just try telling that to those stiffs at city hall, right?

Having witnessed the brutal slaying of his brother as a child, King really has it in for serial killers; which works out nicely as his hometown appears to be stuffed with them.

Although he manages to apprehend the twisted Billy Joel Hill (Mark Collie) before he can blow up a young woman with surgically implanted Semtex, the detective's problems mount when an even more fiendish killer begins a spree of murders.

Calling himself 'Lazereus', the maniac (Michael Filipowich) leaves cryptic astrological clues on his victims' corpses and it's up to King to crack the code. With FBI agent Frankie Miller (Dignard) sniffing around the case, however, it's not long before King himself is being fingered for the killings.

Any film in which a grown man eats a clown has got to be worth a look, and Kill Switch has plenty more insane treats in store.

From a shoot-out in which Seagal fires off hundreds of pistol rounds without reloading to fight scenes that feature his body double so heavily you might think the poor guy's a co-star, this Dirty Harry knock-off straddles the line between disaster and genius.

It's the creative approach to editing that marks Kill Switch out as a cult classic, however, with Seagal's easily distinguished frame and constipated expression being roughly spliced into chop-socky sequences in which he clearly had no part.

What's more, as Seagal wrote the script, maybe only he can answer why the film does a complete tonal u-turn in the last few minutes, leaving him in the arms of a naked blonde? Hmm...

Rivaling Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus for implausibility, this is brilliantly bonkers stuff that demands to be viewed with a hefty supply of beer and a very open mind.

Chris Prince