Madonna with husband Guy Ritchie at the premiere of Revolver at the Toronto film festival. (Reuters)

Toronto, Sept. 13: Hours after Madonna, her arm in a sling following a riding accident, stood alongside her husband Guy Ritchie at the Toronto Film Festival, calling his new movie Revolver “definitely” his best film yet, critics gave it a pasting yesterday.

Screen International’s Allan Hunter predicted audiences would be left “bewildered and disappointed”. He reported that at a preview, some twists and turns provoked “derisive laughter”.

The Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt found that the film spun “wildly in circles, continually doubling back on itself, repeating scenes ? once even backward ? and lines of dialogue until a viewer loses a grip on what is supposed to be real”.

Ritchie said in Toronto his film may be a challenge to cinema-goers. “But I think the audience is ready for that.”

The derision will be a blow to the Hatfield-born film-maker, following the dramatic flop of his last film, Swept Away, which went straight to video in Britain after bad US reviews. It won five awards in the Razzies handed out in Hollywood for the year’s worst pictures.

In the late 1990s, Ritchie was seen, with his production partner Matthew Vaughan, as one of the most exciting film industry finds since Quentin Tarantino. Their first film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, was turned down by 10 British distributors before it got the attention of Tom Cruise. Made for ?960,000, it became the third highest grossing British film of all time. Snatch, their second film, was also a success.

However, after Swept Away, with Madonna’s performance decried as wooden, Vaughan went on to direct last year’s critically acclaimed Layer Cake.

Madonna’s Kabbalah philosophy was influential in the script of Revolver, with Sony Films reported to have withdrawn support when Ritchie refused to tone down the religious references.

In Toronto, Madonna, recovering from breaking eight bones in a fall from her horse at their Wiltshire country house, said the film was “more sophisticated” than her husband’s previous films.

The often violent story stars Jason Statham as a gambler who falls foul of a crime boss (Ray Liotta).

Ritchie said: “I got too fed up with films that didn’t make you think. I liked the idea of one that you’d have to be dancing around with. I like my mind to be engaged when I watch a film.”