Morally and visually murky Nicolas Cage starrer undermines actor’s usual appeal, fails to attract audiences on the late-summer weekend.

The Nicolas Cage film Bangkok Dangerous, recipient of hideously negative reviews from press critics, led the weekend’s U.S. movie box office receipts. It was a pyrrhic victory, however, as the film took in only $7.8 million in a very down week at U.S. theaters.

The last film starring Cage, by contrast, was National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which opened with a healthy $45 million in its first weekend.

Bangkok Dangerous is a remake by directors Oxide Pang and Danny Pang of their hit Hong Kong crime film of the same name (as translated to English, of course). As tends to be the case with Cage films, the lead character’s possible emotional growth and moral redemption is a central concern of Bangkok Dangerous, themes with strong appeal for U.S. audiences.

But the crowds are unlikely to give it much of a chance after seeing the unenticing trailers and reading the catastrophic reviews. With Cage portraying a lead character who is a remorseless and emotionally withdrawn assassin in the gritty, morally and visually murky underworld of the title city, the film seems perfectly calculated to seek out bad reviews and low audience appeal.

It succeeded mightily.

With no appealing new film to attract people to the multiplexes, and with a new TV season beginning and summer’s-end weather luring Americans out of doors, the U.S. box office suffered a terrible weekend. Bangkok Dangerous was the lowest weekend high-grosser since 2003 (the David Spade comedy Dickie Roberts:Former Child Star, in case you’re wondering).

Ironically, the filmmakers expect Bangkok Dangerous to turn a profit because of its relatively low budget and the lack of competition it faced.

The popular and populist films Tropic Thunder and The House Bunny finished a weak second and third.