Somewhere in 50 Shades Darker, the sequel to the 2015 box-office hit 50 Shades of Grey, there's a legitimate drama about gender roles, dominance and fiscal power. But to find it you'd have to get past the obvious dialogue, the repetitive plot, the less than scintillating sexual encounters, the wasted supporting cast, the Ben Wa balls and the scene where a shirtless hunk works out to a terrible Police song.

Not making the effort would be perfectly understandable.

If you haven't seen 50 Shades of Grey, which was adapted from E.L. James' 2011 publishing phenomenon, you'll need a primer, because the new film picks up seemingly weeks after the first concluded.

University student and just deflowered virgin Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is estranged from icy Seattle billionaire and S&M enthusiast Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) after he showed her his true sexual tastes by whipping her buttocks during a visit to his penthouse's kink-friendly "playroom".

Despite the efforts of British filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson (Nowhere Boy), whose background as a visual artist gave her a mocking appreciation of phallic symbols and copulation as a corporate act, 50 Shades of Grey was a bad – sometimes laughably so – picture that toyed with retrograde sexuality. You could never imagine it involved actual people.

Her replacement is veteran American director James Foley, whose best film, At Close Range with Sean Penn and Christopher Walken, was released a mere 31 years ago. Foley's stock in trade is thrillers, and that's what 50 Shades Darker skews towards. When Christian isn't stalking Anastasia, a former submissive partner of his (Bella Heathcote) is stalking them both, while Kim Basinger, as the family friend who seduced Christian as a teen, is also lurking.

The vintage genre feel is not a bad thing, as the central characters have nowhere to go except round in circles: they get close, Christian is a possessive jerk and/or overly keen with the sex toys, Anastasia draws away, rinse and repeat.

For punctuation add spanking, a masked ball and a helicopter crash so shoddily produced Neighbours would have scrapped the sequence.

Christian is able to explain his contentious life to Anastasia just by mentioning that his birth mother was a crack-addicted prostitute, and the main narrative progression is redeeming his character – who frankly should send Anastasia fleeing in terror – so that their romance can escalate to joyous marriage proposal.

The previous film was adapted and directed by women, this one by men. And it shows.