Idris Elba’s first bad move

If you thought the cast and writers of The Wire could do no wrong - think again. The British actor Idris Elba, who plays the suave Baltimore drug dealer Stringer Bell in the cult TV series, appears to have made a bad career move with his starring role in the Fatal Attraction-style thriller Obsessed which opens at UK cinemas today.

The reviews are appalling. "It's execrable; a fist-chewing embarrassment that has no right to a theatrical release," says Wendy Ide in the Times. "An overcooked Fatal Attraction knock-off," says Xan Brooks of the Guardian, in which Elba "gets sucked into the Hollywood sausage machine and emerges looking very ordinary indeed".

Hackney-born Elba plays a Los Angeles financial advisor with a beautiful wife - Beyonce Knowles - and cute kid who gets stalked by the new office temp, a blonde femme fatale in a slinky red dress played by Ali Larter of Heroes. "I think you'll find I'm not your typical temp," she says by way of introduction, and it's downhill from there, ending in a "die you bitch" catfight with Knowles.

The former Destiny's Child singer doesn't come out of the film any better than Elba. Says Tim Robey in the Daily Telegraph: "There's something particularly ungainly about Knowles, electing to play Sharon as an abrasive shrew whose scorn means barking husky ultimata while gyrating precariously on high heels. If Steve Shill's film had given her an outright bunny-boiler to play against, not just Larter's Stalker Barbie, it might have been more honest and less forgettable."

As reported here earlier this month, Elba has been fancying himself as the first black Bond. He'll need to improve his CV if that's ever to happen - even Roger Moore never appeared in a movie as bad as Obsessed. ·