NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - This feature film-starring debut of R&B star Usher finds the popular performer falling closer in impact to Britney Spears' "Crossroads" than Eminem's "8 Mile" even as it plays as a pallid variation on Whitney Houston's "The Bodyguard."

Usher plays Darrell, a DJ at a hot club who is being lusted after constantly by beautiful women. One night, during a visit from Frank (Chazz Palminteri), the father of his best friend who also happens to be a Mafia bigwig, a gunfight breaks out and Darrell takes a bullet that would have killed Frank's beautiful daughter, Dolly (Emmanuelle Chriqui).

The grateful Frank takes Darrell into his palatial home to recuperate, only to have Dolly select him to be her bodyguard when he insists that she needs protection. The inexperienced Darrell does his job all too well, and the pair quickly fall in love, a development that attracts the ire of one of Frank's henchmen (Matt Gerald). Predictable plot complications ensue, with Frank trying to split up the couple even while finding himself embroiled in a mob war.

Played mostly as a drama but utterly devoid of tension, the film mainly comes across as recycled. This is particularly true of the few bits of comic relief, which include Darrell's uncomfortable encounter with a tailor trying to measure his inseam and his leering interaction with a group of women in a yoga class.

The love-story aspect of the plot, which mainly consists of Darrell introducing the rarefied Dolly to such down-home pleasures as poker and soul food, is somewhat less than sizzling.

This is cache, read story here