A MOVIE PACKED WITH A-LIST STARS SHOULD HAVE BEEN AN EASY HIT — BUT THE FURTHER IT GOES, THE MORE YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF ASKING: “WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON?”

I’m afraid to say, I never did quite find out.

This chaotic and overly-ambitious film from the director of American Hustle starts in 1933’s New York after the opening credits state “A lot of this really happened”.

Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) is a World War One soldier who now works as a shady doctor, performing plastic surgery on fellow veterans while the camera zooms in and out on his glass eye and scarred face.

His army pal Harold Woodman (John David Washington) is now a lawyer and hired by the senator’s daughter (Taylor Swift) to investigate his suspicious death.

But while trying to solve the crime, the pair become prime suspects so they call on the help of Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie).

And that’s the thing — there’s a desperation for eccentricity that seeps from Amsterdam’s pores.

Yet it seems completely unsure of what it is.

While loosely based on a true story, it is neither fact or fiction. The performances are neither comedic or dramatic enough to be engaging.

But what it misses in story and script, it makes up for in casting, with turns from Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldana and Mike Myers.

De Niro just about survives this hodge-podge, while Bale’s performance as the broken former soldier has to be his worst big screen turn.