In the previous decade, fictional forensic psychologist and police detective Alex Cross was played by Morgan Freeman in Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. Cross returns to the screen this time via Tyler Perry, better known for his cross-dressing film outings as the freakishly oversized African-American "Madea". Conceived by author James Patterson, the Alex Cross detective novels come across as the potboiler thriller version of the Hannibal Lecter series. In these books, there's always a violent, depraved, serial criminal whose madness or modus operandi is so obscure, whose identity is so cleverly concealed they can only be solved by Detective Dr Alex Cross. Instead of revealing the infernal, internal workings of the sociopaths or the slow, methodical solving of psychological and criminal mysteries, Patterson's novels revel in a dizzying series of plot twists whose flimsiness and plot-holes are overwhelmed by the sheer speed they are introduced.

Alex Cross takes us to the dawn of the detective's career, to the first 'real' case he had before he became an FBI agent — meaning it's a prequel to Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls. Tyler Perry faces off against Party of Five alum Matthew Fox as "Picasso", a depraved, serial-killing torturer who prefers to drug his victims so that they remain conscious and fully sensate when he's torturing them to death for fun and profit, then leave charcoal etchings at the scene of the crime so that a genius detective can souse out his identity, precise pathological nature, modus operandi, and next victim.

What's impressive aside from how improbable this all seems and how the script demands a straight face from its cast, is how former teen idol (Party of Five) Matthew Fox seems to have shed all his baby fat and bulked up tremendously for this role. And how after a few more improbable, deft plot twists, this suddenly morphs into a corporate action-thriller where a very bloated Jean Reno plays a French billionaire who wants to rebuild Detroit — if "Picasso" doesn't add him to his collection of exquisitely tortured victims.

Like its source material, this film appeals to the natural consumers of pulp thrillers who do not expect thrillers to make sense or be free of ridiculous loopholes, but only ask that they be sufficiently convoluted and solved in the end by someone who won't confuse them with a lengthy explanation. Far more an action piece than a psychological thriller it nominally sets itself to be, Alex Cross is ironically saved by a suitably menacing and creepy Matthew Fox.