THE FAMILY (15, 111 mins) ** Starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dianna Agron, John D’Leo, Tommy Lee Jones, Jimmy Palumbo, Domenick Lombardozzi, Stan Carp, Jon Freda. Director: Luc Besson

The family that slays together stays together – with a degree of reluctance – in this black comedy based on a book by Tonino Benacquista.

Punctuated by scenes of cartoonish violence, including an explosive bout of supermarket rage, The Family razes one sleepy corner of Normandy in its ham-fisted pursuit of big bangs and laughs.

It’s a far, desperate cry from the propulsive energy and intense emotions of Besson’s hit-man thriller, Leon, which starred Jean Reno and a smouldering, Lolita-esque Natalie Portman.

The family in question comprises of Fred (De Niro), his long-suffering wife Maggie (Pfeiffer) and their two children, 17-year-old Belle (Agron) and 14-year-old Warren (D’Leo), who arrive at their new ramshackle home in the dead of night.

“Do we still have the same name?” Warren asks his mother.

“No, now we’re the Blake family,” she reminds him.

It transpires that the exhausted quartet are the Manzonis from Brooklyn, who have been placed in witness protection under the supervision of FBI handler Robert Stansfield (Jones) and his stooges, Di Cicco (Palumbo) and Caputo (Lombardozzi).

Giovanni snitched on fellow mobster Don Luchese (Carp) and his family has been on the run ever since, moving from one location to the next to avoid a shallow grave.

While the patriarch disgorges his memoirs using an old typewriter and Maggie seeks absolution from the local priest (Craig), the youngsters acclimatise to their new school.

Warren creates a domino rally of scams to outwit the bullies, while Belle decides to relinquish her virginity to a college student, who is the object of every hormone-addled classmate’s fantasies.

Like the dysfunctional clan at the film’s blackened heart, The Family pretends to be one thing – a giddy whirl of action, thriller and romance – but turns out to be something else entirely: an unholy mess.

Tonal shifts, which Besson accomplished with elan in his earlier pictures, are awkward and jarring like a first-time driver grinding through the gears.

The chief culprit is the script, which gives only a cursory glance at the characters.

We are kept at arm’s length from Giovanni and his brood when we should be warming to them before Don Luchese’s army of trench coat-clad assassins descends on their hiding place, armed to the hilt with guns and missiles.

Oscar winners De Niro and Jones have seen better days, and will again. Both go through the motions with a weariness that suggests their minds are elsewhere, while Pfeiffer’s hot-headed matriarch has just one discernible quality: wizardry with pasta in the kitchen.

Considering the film is set in a region famous for its gastronomic specialities, her glory days of tossing al dente penne in fresh tomato sauce are surely numbered.