I was reminded of this demonstration while watching Red Mercury, which seems to have everything you’d need to make a top-notch thriller—hot-button topics (terrorism, dirty bombs, religious beliefs, race relations), good locations and quality actors like Stockard Channing, Ron Silver and Pete Postlethwaite—and it comes out as a soupy mess. A dull soupy mess at that.

Three Pakistani youths belonging to a London terror cell are in the process of assembling their “mojo” (a dirty bomb) using the title material, which, according to Wikipedia, “is a substance that was claimed to be used in the creation of nuclear bombs, as well as a variety of unrelated weapons systems,” when they get tipped that their flat will be raided and they have to make a run for it. They duck into a Greek restaurant run by a Cypriot (Channing); among the patrons are a writer (David Bradley from the Harry Potter films) and an American lawyer (Silver). Now it’s a hostage situation.

The police commander (Postlethwaite) and terrorism expert Sofia (Juliet Stevenson) negotiate with the would-be terrorists while trying to figure out what they’re really up to. Sofia’s a bit distracted by personal issues, though, including a daughter who’s into self-harming and a dour ex-husband. Plus, somebody’s leaking info to the press as fast the police receive it. Meanwhile, the captors and captives discuss religion, debate politics and even bond a little.

This situation sounds like it has dramatic possibilities, but director Roy Battersby and screenwriter Farrukh Dhondy explore few of them, opting instead for pacing that makes watching paint dry seem downright exciting by comparison. There’s much more talk than action, and that would be fine if anyone had anything interesting to say, but they don’t. Even the arguments about Islam and martyrdom fail to generate any heat.

Battersby doesn’t get much out of the actors either. Bradley shows the most passion of the bunch, and Silver gets some of the best dialog—nobody plays arrogant but smart as well as he does. Channing, though, plays the restaurant owner with a thick Greek accent (at least I think that’s what she was going for—more often, she sounds Russian). She’s a veteran actress, a former Oscar nominee and Emmy winner; why saddle her with a distracting accent so heavy it would take two actors to lift it?

Then there are the terrorists themselves, who are dense to say the least. When the police toss a tear gas grenade through the window, it doesn’t go off immediately, so the one of the captors grabs it and tosses it back out, giving the police a fine set of his fingerprints. Do the terrorists retaliate by shooting any hostages, or at least threatening to do so? Do they even pause to discuss what just happened? If they do, we don’t get to see it. And why does at least one of the terrorists looked shocked at the suggestion that they might have to set off the bomb in the restaurant, thus sacrificing themselves for the sake of jihad? What did they think they were signing up for? And if the bomb were powerful enough to wipe out London, as Sofia suggests, wouldn’t that have killed them anyway?

These questions are more interesting than anything that happens in Red Mercury, but you won’t learn any answers by watching it. The only thing you’ll learn from Red Mercury is how to be bored for 90 minutes or so.