What holds Ida Red together and gives it solidity is the relationships between Wyatt, Jeanie and Darla, which might not be entirely original but they don’t need to be thanks to good ensemble performances, with Hartnett very much at ease and Hublitz making an impression in her biggest role to date.

Swab’s strong suit, conversely, lies in the selection and handling of his performers.

If this kind of genre stuff is your cinematic meat, and you’re properly enamored of any of the principal cast members, Swab has enough directorial energy to keep the proceedings watchable at the least.

There needs to be a vision, an ambition to make something good and memorable. Ida Red, unfortunately, seems to fall into the trap of emulating better crime dramas instead of trying to stand out on the merits of its own story.

Here, no one seems capable of envisaging even the most immediate consequences of their increasingly vicious actions, and so where “Ida Red” wants us to thrill to the idea of criminality as almost a genetic inheritance, a trait carried down a bloodline like blue eyes or freckles, in fact, all it really suggests is that this family might be really dumb, and actually quite bad at crime.

Competent enough to be dull and nowhere near bold enough to be interesting, the new crime thriller by John Swab (Body Brokers) evaporates from memory even faster than it can dole out plot twists.