That was fast. Just a few days into the Sundance Film Festival, and already there is a major flop. This flop features the performance of our favorite robot, Katie Holmes. Don’t go thinking that Katie destroyed this film all on her own – from what I can see, her role is barely supporting in a cast that includes Channing Tatum, Al Pacino, Juliette Binoche and Ray Liotta. Katie plays Tatum’s character’s wife in The Son of No One – by the looks of it, a pretty standard cop drama. So why all the hate directed at the Kate-Bot specifically? Well… apparently she’s the worst part. And people (critics) were openly laughing at her melodramatic performance.

Katie Holmes just can’t catch a break — at least when it comes to her career. First her eight-part miniseries The Kennedys, in which she was set to star as former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was dropped by the History Channel, and now her crime drama, The Son of No One, has earned the undesired label of the Sundance Film Festival’s first bomb.

Dito Montiel’s crime drama The Son of No One had its first screening for press and industry at noon Monday at the Yarrow Hotel Theatre ahead of its closing-night premiere at the Eccles Theatre on Friday. Anticipation was high for the new work from the writer-director of the award-winning 2006 Sundance crime drama A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. With No One, Montiel was returning with another gritty New York-set feature and a high-profile cast: Al Pacino, Channing Tatum, Ray Liotta, Juliette Binoche and Katie Holmes.

Though the theater wasn’t full, the room was crowded with acquisitions execs wanting an early look at the film. Reps from Samuel Goldwyn, Paramount, Summit, the Weinstein Co., Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group, IFC Films, Morgan Creek, Screen Media, Miramax and Relativity made it into the theater by the film’s opening credits.

Some of them, however, were gone well before the end credits. In addition, enough regular audience members left early for one observer to describe it as an “exodus.”

The negative response went beyond the walkouts. One viewer’s attempt to begin applause after the lights came up drew almost no takers.

Though Holmes only had a small role in the New York-based cop flick, which stars Al Pacino and Channing Tatum, an insider tells UsMagazine.com her performance was memorable — for all the wrong reasons.

“When Katie showed up on screen, there was a collective groan,” says a source, who attended the screening. “She plays the wife of a Queens’ cop [Tatum] and she was completely miscast. They have her cursing a lot. And when she swore, there were chuckles.”

Continues the insider of the actress, 32, “She was wrong for it. Al Pacino’s acting in the movie was intentionally over the top, and he did it with a wink. Most of the cast seemed in on the joke — except for Katie. She was acting like she was in a dramatic Sundance indie, when it’s really just a typical cop movie.”

[From The Hollywood Reporter and Us Weekly]

Yes, Katie’s acting is pretty bad. It’s actually worse than it was when she was a kid on Dawson’s Creek – it’s like she’s spent the last decade picking up the worst acting “tricks” in the industry. What she really needs is to A) Get new management, a new agent, somebody who isn’t going to sugarcoat her awfulness and B) Find a niche. Like Jennifer Aniston – Katie needs to find some kind of role “type” that the audience will accept her as. Maybe it’s as the romantic comedy heroine – although I don’t see that for Katie. Perhaps it’s as drama supporting actress, although she usually sucks doing that too. Screw it, I have no idea what she should do. Just go shopping again, Katie.

Here’s the trailer for The Son of No One:

Katie filming The Son of No One last April, photos courtesy of WENN.