The Darwin Awards, a forgettable comedy from writer/director Finn Taylor, is loosely based on a series of popular books written by Wendy Northcutt. Joseph Fiennes stars as Michael Burrows, a criminal profiler who works for the San Francisco Police Department. Burrows would be a full-fledged investigator with the force if he didn’t suffer from a condition that causes him to faint at the first sight of blood.

Coming face to face with a suspected serial killer (Tim Blake Nelson) after leaving a bookstore one night, Burrows follows him down an alley. A scuffle ensues as the profiler attempts to nab the suspect without police backup. Nelson’s character rises to his feet after Burrows pummels him to the ground. However, Burrows notices blood trickling from the suspect’s nose and suddenly faints, so the alleged killer is able to vanish into the night.

This entire incident was caught on video by an aspiring documentary filmmaker (Wilmer Valderrama), who has picked Burrows as the focus of his latest cinematic effort. When Burrows bellows at the filmmaker to shut off his camera and help him capture the perp, Valderrama’s character refuses, claiming that helping his film's subject would throw his objectivity out the window.

Later, the unemployed Burrows spends all his time reading about the Darwin Awards on the Internet. These awards have existed since the late 1970s and recognize people who have unintentionally killed themselves by doing something tremendously foolish.

Burrow’s obsession with the Darwin Awards leads him to approach the CEO of a major life insurance corporation. He wants to develop a system that would help the company identify applicants who ought to be rejected because of their susceptibility to accidentally killing themselves while doing something stupid. Once implemented, the system would also allow the firm to deny funds to relatives of these individuals. The insurance company refuses to hire Burrows until they see if his system actually works on some of their real cases.

With the documentary filmmaker in tow, Burrows must now also work with an insurance claims investigator named Siri (Winona Ryder) who dislikes his system and cannot stand him. Burrows has only a month to prove he can single out these poor unfortunate people before they inadvertently kill themselves. If he succeeds, the company just might consider giving him a full-time job.

Fiennes delivers a wooden performance here and appears to be uncomfortable in scenes he shares with Ryder, who is miscast as Siri. Taylor’s direction seems heavy-handed, and his screenplay contains few actual laughs. Casual DVD renters as well as diehard fans of Northcutt’s various Darwin Award books -- and her darwinawards.com Internet site -- will probably feel let down by this disappointing film presentation.

(Released by 20th Century Fox and rated “R” for language, violent images, some sexuality and drug use.)