ONLY Michael Caine rivals John Travolta for the most erratic silver-screen career. Should they ever perform together, the movie would surely be a hit... or then again a miss.

Last year, Travolta was the epitome of lounge-lizard villainous cool in the otherwise bloated Swordfish, and the ironically titled Lucky Number was anything but lucky, going straight to the UK video bin. Now, in a week of left-over releases that has the look of the Hollywood post-Christmas sales about it, Domestic Disturbance falls off the peg, an ill-fitting made-to-measure thriller in which Travolta is in protective nice-guy mode.

Sincerity has never been his best suit: Travolta requires a little devilment. Think of Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, Swordfish, even Italian roughneck Tony in Saturday Night Fever. In Domestic Disturbance he plays a kindly dad, a builder of old-fashioned, unwanted boats who somewhere in the past had a drink problem and still has financial difficulties. Hence his beloved son Danny (Matt O'Leary) is now living with his Apple Pie mom (Teri Polo, latterly in Meet The Parents) and new stepdad, rich Rick.

Outwardly, Rick is a charmer but inwardly... Well, Vince Vaughn is playing him, and given that he was Norman Bates in that redundant Psycho remake, it comes as no surprise that he's a psychopath. No surprise, that is, except, to his new wife and the local townsfolk who welcomed this stranger with the big bank balance and the blank CV as the saviour of their business community.

Young Danny is a serial liar so no one believes him when he says he saw Rick kill an unwanted wedding guest and 'business partner' from his dodgy past (another cameo for Steve Buscemi, Hollywood's Mr Weird).

The murder is finished off in the flames of a brickworks incinerator - truly a case of "You're fired" - so the police find no evidence but doting daddy Travolta says his son never lies to him. Here goes another good versus bad showdown with the kid as the pawn in the middle, and a director stuck for new ideas on how to scare, shock, thrill or disturb.

Harold Becker falls far short of his Sea Of Love peak, conjuring up all the tension and drama of an Iain Duncan Smith speech, and so Domestic Disturbance is as exciting as watching the paint dry on one of Travolta's boats.

Updated: 08:55 Friday, January 11, 2002