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To mark the release of Paydirt on 24th August, we’ve been given 2 copies to give away on DVD.

Set in the scorching Californian desert, the heat is on as career criminal Damien Brooks aka The Brit (Luke Goss), fresh from prison after a five-year stretch, is determined to find the buried stash of cash that landed him in a cell after a DEA bust gone wrong. He’s served his time…now he wants his pay.

As he rounds up his old crew of mismatched badasses, all with their own problems, a plan starts to form…but the word is out that a real-life treasure hunt is going down and other criminal firms want in on the act.

Then there’s retired Sheriff William Tucker (Val Kilmer)…he’s on the warpath, obsessed with righting past wrongs and he’ll stop at nothing to find the perpetrators, whatever the cost.

Surely, it can’t be long before we see a new addition to “The Film Critic’s Lexicon,” in the chapter devoted to such shorthand similes as “feels like a Hallmark movie,” “resembles an after-school special” and that old standby, “Tarantinoesque.” Chances are very good there will be something on the order of “good enough for lockdown” or “quarantine time-killer,” used to describe the sort of unabashedly derivative and instantly disposable genre fare that might find an audience among undemanding genre enthusiasts in search of something new — anything new — to watch while homebound.

And when that label does indeed appear, don’t be surprised to see a production still from writer-director Christian Sesma’s “Paydirt” alongside it as illustration.

A thoroughly mediocre but sporadically diverting mashup of elements cribbed from the cinemas of Guy Ritchie, Steven Soderbergh and, yes, Quentin Tarantino, “Paydirt” is a crime drama with darkly comical touches...

Paydirt is a godawful Guy Ritchie knockoff that fails utterly as a heist flick. A British parolee wrangles his old crew for one last big score in the California desert. Luke Goss does his Jason Statham impersonation surrounded by painfully dumb supporting characters. Who've got nifty nicknames like "The Brit", "The Babe", and "The Badass." They bumble about in a hackneyed plot peppered with terrible action scenes. A clearly ill Val Kilmer co-stars to the best of his abilities. He struggles in this performance while recovering from throat cancer.

The film opens "five years ago" in the Coachella Valley. Sheriff Tucker (Val Kilmer) leads a DEA raid on a known drug trafficker, Damien Brooks (Luke Goss) aka "The Brit." A shootout ends with innocent lives lost and a paltry amount of marijuana discovered. Tucker gets his man, but takes the fall for the bungled operation. The Brit receives a much shorter sentence for possession.