Dark Matter (2008)

Liu Xing (Liu Ye) is a brilliant Chinese student who's recently arrived at an American university, where things go good, then bad, then — totally out of nowhere — really bad. It helps to know that Dark Matter is based on a real-life situation that ended violently. Otherwise, its climax is likely to garner where'd-that-come-from snorts instead of the hoped-for gut punch. But either way, Liu Ye is too inexpressive for his role's demands, and the movie doesn't build to his downfall: It just zaps itself there. C-