Movie Nation

There’s something almost criminal about Amazon acquiring the 2020 immigration “comedy” “Deported,” and passing it off as a “new” “2026” release on their streaming service.

There hasn’t been a good time to unleash a raunchy, tone deaf and whitewashed farce about immigration in the past decade. But putting this Trump I era disaster in front of eyeballs in the middle of the murderously inhumane Trump II regime is damned near criminal.

It’s a familiar-faces/little-known-names romp buried under f-bombs, coarse sex jokes and a cascade of cameos. It’s tooth-grindingly bad, so much so that even Sandler hanger-on Nick Swardson seems embarassed in his scenes in it.

Robert Davi as a customs agent? He seems disappointed the guy isn’t more sadistic.

Director and co-writer Tyler Spindel (“The Wrong Missy”) chickened-out straight away by making this about a Canadian blonde (Megan Park) our “illegal” — “Deported” and banned for messing up some paperwork.

So rather than something edgy, like Cheech and Chong’s decades old “Born in East L.A.,” he makes an unromantic and almost wholly unfunny “Green Card,” about blonde Harper’s dizzy-but-not-nearly-dizzy-enough beau Ross (Whitmer Thomas) refusing to commit to marrying her so that she can finish chef school and, you know, take a chef’s job from an “American” so that she can realize her dreams.

Threatened by his girlfriend’s hunkier and more eager to help friend (Greg Sulkin), Ross’s plan involves marrying her off to this slovenly lout (Mickey Gooch, Jr.) who crashed the Halloween party where Ross and Harper first met.

The odd early tasteless joke has promise — one costumed partygoer shows up nude and years past her last sit-up.

“I’m LENA DUNHAM! I’m COMFORTABLE with my body?”

The “GET it?” is implied in this and most every other “joke” rolled out from here on out.

Ross’s big tech idea is a “Dick Face” app he’s pushing, which adds a penis cap to any photo you post in it.

His sort-of-separated-under-the-same-roof parents (Brenda Strong, Kurt Fuller) trot out testiness about “getting married too young” and intolerance of this would-be-chef who was caught re-entering the country from an Indian cooking school’s seminar.

“She got a dot?”

That much of the movie’s messaging seems on the mark, the idea that America is a nation of descendents of immigrants but roiling with casual, off-the-cuff bigots.

As “there is no such thing as a fake marriage in a REAL relationship,” as on-the-make lesbian and Ross pal Tammy (Fortune Feimster) declares, this is where Doug Lipinski (Gooch) fits in.

He may be a walking, belching, unbathed butt-crack. He may not know how to pronounce his own name (first or last). He may be “definitely on the spectrum.” But he’s willing to sneak into Canada for a quickie fake wedding just to get Harper back across the border.

Conchata Ferrell (“Two and a Half Men”) is his brassy, bare-knuckled, not-quite-disapproving mom. Swardson plays his jealous, over-bearing brother.

Jokes about women as “fire breathing whore dragons,” life onboard Doug’s barely-floating converted-tug houseboat’s resident lava-lamp-humping rat, “butt chugging” and the like don’t move any thinking or sentient person’s needle.

Clint Howard, Missi Pyle, Steven Bauer and others trot by in unfunny cameos.

And the attempted story “arc,” where we glimpse Doug’s unhappy humanity and Ross grows a pair while Harper considers her options but not really, are all clumsily handled

“Cringe comedy” is one thing, and raunchy fare like this still plays to sensory-deprived stoners.

But this is just bad, and Bezos & Co. know it. Which is why they tried to pass it off as “new.”

Rating:

Cast: Whitmer Thomas, Megan Park, Mickey Gooch, Jr.,Fortune Feimster, Kurt Fuller, Brenda Strong, Steven Bauer, Missi Pyle, Clint Howard, Nick Swardson, Conchata Ferrell and Robert Davi.

Credits: Directed by Tyler Spindel, scripted by Tyler Spindel and Dean Ward. A Quiver release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:31

Any team-up of one of the cinema’s most enduring off-camera couples, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, should be cherished. They’re both so very good and “natural” doesn’t begin to describe their onscreen chemistry together. They’re as close as Hollywood gets to a Lunt & Fontanne, these days.

And if their latest film outing as a couple, “The Best You Can,” isn’t all it might have been, they’re still grand in it.

It’s a lurching, cloying and uneven romance that folds in a lot of drama — some of it organic, much of it contrived — as it tosses in the odd tone-deaf scene, moment or performance.

Written and directed by sitcom vet Michael J. Weithorn (“The King of Queens”), it bears the trademark of sitcom writer/creators adapting to the big screen. A TV season’s clutter of characters and situations and story arcs are crammed into a 100 minute film.

Sedgwick plays Cynthia, a New York urologist finally facing the end game of marrying an older spouse. Warren Rand (Judd Hirsch) was a legal tyro in his day, a government attorney who held Nixon and his criminal crew accountable for Watergate. Now, he’s forgetting things, having “episodes. He’ll gregariously go to the wrong table in a restaurant and continue an earlier conversation or anecdote — sometimes from MUCH earlier — with strangers.

“He’s older than me,” 60something Cynthia keeps telling folks. “Older than most people.”

The 25 or so year age difference is taking its toll and rattling her.

Bacon plays Stan, an ex-cop and divorced dad coping with his first blast of prostate issues. His constant need for pee breaks makes his night patrolman for a home security company job an ordeal. And that’s not going to make his casual sex and sexting affair with a cashier (Olivia Luccardi) with a “hot old guy thing” any easier.

Cynthia meets Stan when somebody tries to break into the Rands’ townhouse. The way she chatters away tells us she’s a bit rattled, and maybe grateful to have a conversation with somebody who can stay on topic. She babbles on even after Stan begs to use their bathroom.

Yes, the urologist asks him to “call my office.” Yes, there’s an exam. But an informal friendship blooms from this unlikely meet up. They have the same birthday, and now each has a contemporary to talk to.

The text chats are intimate without intimacy. They share jokes about “fragile” Gen Z, as he has a troubled but talented daughter (Brittany O’Grady). She shares her efforts to get her husband to write a book about his colorful life while he still can, hiring a grad student researcher, with Warren able to remember a lot even as he forgets they’re “working” and wanders off.

It’s all very sweet and innocent. How long can that last?

Weithorn shoehorns in lines, dialogue exchanges, characters and situations you usually see in broadly played sitcoms — a lurch or two into sex talk, a two couples dinner conversation in a restaurant that turns to “My first time” — a sitcommy/joky “consulation” with an old colleague (Ray Romano) who is so tactless in discussing her husband’s dementia that you’d swear he’s a surgeon and not a neurologist.

But there are still lovely moments — Cynthia hiring a nurse (Meer Rohit Kumhbani) whose compassion extends to letting Warren tell her his life story, for posterity, hot-tempered Stan finally “hearing” his nervous, afraid of performing daughter and doing something more than play his ukulele in support.

The picture is — like life itself once you’ve gotten that “Welcome” letter from the AARP — a mixed bag. The supporting characters are less fleshed-out, so much so that when Stan’s daughter shows us her many “triggers,” we scratch our head.

And when Luccardi’s gum-snapping 20something throws her “hot old guy” thing out there, it plays like it sounds — like an older screenwriter’s male wish fulfillment fantasy.

But Bacon plays a little and sings a little, Sedgwick handles jokes and pathos and in the scenes that count and turns “professional” in a heartbeat. And each gets across a shared empathy and humanity that bridges any gap in class and life experience.

They’re the reasons to watch “The Best You Can.” The writer director? Well, let’s just hope this wasn’t his “best.”

Rating: R, sexual situations, some drug use, profanity

Cast: Kyra Sedgwick, Kevin Bacon, Brittany O’Grady, Olivia Luccardi, Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Ray Romano and Judd Hirsch

Credits: Directed by Michael J. Weithorn. A Sony Pictures release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:43

The latest Peter Farrelly of The Farrelly Bros. comedy is a tale of condoms, testicular protection, the South American cocaine trade, the World Cup and two doofuses who find one “fine mess” after another to get themselves into.

“Balls Up” is a buddy picture that leans hard into vulgar laughs and finds even them hard to come by. Shockingly.

I was impressed by Mark Wahlberg‘s commitment and energy level in a movie where over-acting is demanded by the lumbering, nearly lifeless script. Take away the usual Farrelly shocks — penises, alligator corpse desecration and Molly Shannon showering the soundtrack with F-bombs — and there’s a whole not of nothing funny or even all that interesting going on in this never-quite-promising farce that gets worse the longer it goes on.

Buddy comedy pro Wahlberg is paired with slow and slow-talking sight-gaggy Paul Walter Hauser of “I, Tonya” and “BlackKlansman” and that just doesn’t pay or play.

Hauser plays Elijah, a pedantic, humor-impaired and risk-averse designer at a condom company that hopes to become the official prophylactic of the (fictional) World Cup 2025, slated for Brazil.

Wahlberg’ is ace salesman Brad, who might save Royal Blue Condom Company’s “Testicle Sentinel” innovation and its very existence by closing this deal.

Watching Elijah’s pained and off-color/over-sharing”presentation” of this innovation to the corporate higher ups (Molly Shannon is CEO) makes that seem like its own Project Hail Mary. Even the introduction of a blue dildo vibrator doesn’t help.

But Brad aces his “Let us cup you and yours at the next World Cup” pitch to Brazilian honcho Santos (Benjamin Bratt, a hoot) and his South American underlings. If only they’d stopped there, and not talked “nine years sober” Santos into celebratory drinks at the sort of vast, production-designed nightclub you only see in the movies.

The cheap shots and mockery of Alcoholics Anonymous are vintage Farrelly (“Dumb and Dumber,” “Kingpin”). Peter and his brother Bobby invented “Oh no they DIDN’T” sacred-cow mockery.

“Joo know what aye haven’tried een a long time,” Bratt purrs?

“Skee-ball,” Brad guesses?

“CRACK!”

But the evening and the movie slip into a coma after that early transgressive buzz as our “heroes” get fired and the company closes, only to have uncanceled tickets arrive months later for the condom designer and “Brad from Sales,” who get to fly down to see Brazil battle Argentina for the title.

There’s an “incident.” The game is compromised and a whole country wants the blood of “os estupidos,” as they call the Ugly Americans.

Screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese cut and paste together a story of “You’re free to go…be lynched by Brazilians” official corruption, a more sympathetic and comically-accented drug lord played by Sacha Baron Cohen who has something else in mind for those condoms these two are responsible for, and a visit to Amazonia, where cultish environmentalists do ayuhuasca and protect native species by killing anybody they think is a poacher.

Chelsy Crisp and Eric André try to breathe life into those latter scenes. And a little of S.B. Cohen goes a long way.

Depending on your sense of humor and chemically altered state, there might be half a dozen chuckles in “Balls Up” — less if you’re sober.

The movie and time itself slows to a crawl through the excruciatingly unamusing latter acts. And just when you think it can’t fall more completely to pieces, here comes a finale that further lowers the bar.

Farrelly’s movie, like his comic shock-shtick, gets old in a hurry.

Rating: R, violence, nudity, drug content and profanity

Cast: Mark Walhberg, Paul Walter Hauser, Molly Shannon, Daniela Melchior, Eva de Dominic, Chelsey Crisp, Eric André, Sacha Baron Cohen and Benjamin Bratt.

Credits: Directed by Peter Farrelly, scripted by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. An MGM release on Amazon Prime

Running time: 1:45

A fun and furious phenomenon of the ’90s New York punk scene is given its due and another faint glimpse of the spotlight in “Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks,” a wry, wizened and not remotely bitter doc about a band that never quite made it, but should have.

They were a respected and popular (not THAT popular) “all girl” ’90s punk band — contemporaries of The Go Go’s, musical, spiritual and showmanship descendents of The Runaways.

The documentary’s decades of performance footage, capturing them as enthusiastic and musically polished teens and onward, makes their case for them all over again. With a sometimes-model lead singer (Theo Kogan) who looks like an ABBA love child and sounds like Cherie Currie (Runaways), howling guitars (played by Gina Volpe and Sindi Benezra) and a thunderous beat provided by bassist Sydney “Squid” Silver and a passing parade of drummers, they should be household names.

A rock journalist working on their biography, Jeanne Fury, assures them that they’d made a huge splash if they reunited. But as that book came out to good reviews and vanished and this documentary finished its film festival run quite a while ago, that didn’t exactly turn out to be the case.

Writer-director Ilya Chaiken’s film still makes for a light and heavily tattooed tour of that Nirvana/Offspring punk era — the rank sexism and abuse the band faced, the internal melodrama of bandmates as lovers and/or junkies and chances the Lunachicks had at the big brass ring.

Forming in the not-yet-Disneyfied New York of the ’80s, when CBGBs was still a thing and punk refused to die, they “wanted to be KISS,” Volpe laughs. They played up a “demented Barbie dolls” image in their stage attire, and titled their albums and EPs “Pretty Ugly,” “Binge & Purge” and “Babysitters on Acid.”

What’s not to love?

The band had minor label record deals, occasional TV and radio exposure, showcase appearances in the Vans Warped Tour, Reading Festival and tours opening for the likes of The Ramones, The Go Go’s, The Buzzcocks, The Dictators, Offspring, Joan Jett, Dinosaur Jr., GWAR and even No Doubt.

They faced sexist taunting from some headliners and mosh pit violence from the mostly-male audience directed at women in the crowd and in the band. Each Lunachick felt they had “something to prove,” “a wall to break down” various members remember.

Their feminism and sex appeal, their polished and frenetic playing, over-the-top shows and tongue-in-cheek tunes — “Jan Brady,” “Spork,” “Buttplug” and “Bitterness Barbie” among them — gave this New York quintet hipster cachet and a rabid following — especially among their punk contemporaries.

But the all-too-familiar story of how success or the lack of it eats away at band harmony plays out here — a taste of the wrong kind of “fame” (Howard Stern running gags, an infamous Calvin Klein heroin chic ad campaign), squabbles about money and credits and resentment over the attention “the beautiful one” gets.

Still, you know there’s a hatchet-burying to come and when it arrives, you can’t help but be touched. And if you aren’t tracking down their tunes after seeing this, your only excuse is “doctor’s orders” about your tinnitus.

Rating: unrated, some nudity, profanity

Cast: Theo Kogan, Gina Volpe, Chip English, Sindi Benezra, Sydney Silver, Becky Wreck and Jeanne Fury, with members of L7, The Offspring, Blondie and The Go Go’s, among others

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ilya Chaiken. A Giant release.

Running time: 1:31

What a time to be alive and a witness to Bob Odenkirk, the Badass Years.

The “Mr. Show” alumnus and ex-“Saturday Night Live” writer, a bit player on every sitcom from “Seinfeld” to “How I Met Your Mother” tapped into something dark and capable of violence with his supporting turn on the breakout series “Breaking Bad.”

Let the murderous mayhem begin as “Better Call Saul” begat “Nobody” and “Nobody 2” and now a tale of a “Normal” town gone in a “Minnesota Nice” way.

Based on “Fargo Lite” story pitch by writer/actor Bob, “Normal” is a conventionally unconventional thriller about an “interim sheriff,” “sort of like a substitute teacher/a midwife with a gun,” hired the duly elected Normal County sheriff dies under circumstances no local seems to find all that unusual.

Turns out, this “half-abandoned” town with mostly-armed citizens has an ace in the hole keeping it afloat. The Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) are stashing their American profits in cash and gold in the local bank.

No nooo, there’s nothing suspicious about those two Japanese bank guards (Peter Shinkoda plays one). The mayor (Henry Winkler) is a big fan of the temp sheriff’s “light touch” — warnings, not tickets, “let’s not get involved” is a rule of thumb.

“I get to say ‘Nothing to see here” over and over again,” Sheriff Ulysses narrates in a long letter to his estranged wife Penny.

That’s the framing/expositional device here. How’d this guy work his way down the law enforcement ladder to a series of temp jobs? When did he stop giving a damn, and why? And what might make him give a damn again?

Could it be the blunt and brassy bar owner (Lena Heady)? Maybe the dead sheriff’s non-binary daughter Alex (Jess MCleod), who seems to be the only one really upset about dad’s death.

“This town used to know right from wrong.”

The tipping point comes when Temp Sheriff Ulysses (Bobby O. was feeling his oats when he came up with that name for his character) tries to de-escalate a bank robbery committed by two homeless drifters (Reena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher) whom he knows dote on their dog.

His politically ambitious top deputy (Ryan Allen) is the one who leads the town’s shootists in their fusilade of the bank and the sticking-his-nose-in-their-business “interim” sheriff.

The movie’s set-up isn’t the most original or surprising. And the story beats that follow this bank stand-off — discovering the vast arsenal that the “department” has stockpiled, just waiting for all hell to break loose, the assorted cute local “types” who turn gun nutty when provoked by Ulysses’ interference and the ticking clock counting down until the murderous top dog of the yakuza (Takahiro Inoue) lands, having flown in to see what the hell is going on with his ill-gotten gains on deposit — don’t deviate from formula.

The Minnesooooooota “types” aren’t as broadly or adorably drawn as those in “Fargo,” even if the violence is on a snowy par with the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece. And the “letter” narration is borderline lazy as a framing device.

But there’s witty banter about bank robberies in a “just tap your card” society — “Nobody uses cash any more.” And director Ben Wheatley (“Free Fire” and “Sightseers” were his) knows his way around a shoot-out, punch-out, snowplow chase or what have you.

One film fan’s “predictable” can be a lot of filmgoers’ comfort food. And kudos to Odenkirk’s personal trainer. After all, why should Liam Neeson, Jackie Chan and Denzel get all the AARP badass roles?

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity throughout

Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Ryan Allen, Reena Jolly, Billy MacLellan, Jess McLeod, Peter Shinkoda, Takahiro Inoe, Henry Winkler and Lena Heady

Credits: Directed by Ben Wheatley, scripted Derek Kolstad and Bob Odenkirk (story). A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:31

Dysfunction Junction is somewhere in the career-criminal packed suburbs of northern New Jersey in Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott’s “Big Mistakes,” a harder-edged, over-plotted way of covering the same ground as “Schitt’s Creek,” with little of the charm.

Bingeing this eight episode Netflix offering plays up the darkly funny “Oh no they DIDN’T” bits of business and outlandish or just plain grim plot turns. And bingeing makes nakedly plain the fact that “Mistakes” shoots its wad in the first two episodes and fiddles and faddles through the rest trying to top that.

The quarrelsome siblings in this family are Morgan (Taylor Ortega) and her adopted older brother Nicky (Levy) — “Nicholas” to his church congregation. Levy deciding that a gay Canadian Jew in the Protestant clergy is a joke doesn’t pay off nearly as well as he hoped.

Morgan is a school teacher with impulse control issues and committment problems with her “boring” significant other since high school (17 years ago), Max (Jack Innanen). Nicky has a lover (Jacob Gutierrez) and a congregation he won’t come out to no matter what century this is.

Divorced Mom (the indomitable Laurie Metcalf) inherited the family hardware store and is running for mayor against a cutthroat Jimmy Johns franchisee (Darren Goldstein), but not to worry — youngest, stablest and smartest daughter Natalie (Abby Quinn) is running her campaign.

The “Big Mistakes” begin when this stressed-but-maintaining-an-even-strain clan is tested by the death of Nonna (Judith Roberts), their matriarch. That’s what sends Mom over the edge ordering the kids to fetch granny’s “dying wish,” a necklace to be buried in.

And that’s what puts fearful, keeping-up-appearances figure of “some standing” in the community, Pastor Nicholas and loose cannon Morgan in a cheap gift shop where one shoplifted necklace later, a Turkish clerk (Boran Kuzum) is armed and on their case, kidnapping the siblings for a face-off with a murderous Russian mobster (Mark Ivanir).

Nicky and Morgan “owe” him a necklace, even though it’s been buried with grandma. They owe him “a favor” beyond that. As the favors pile up and the Brazilian and the Italian mob get involved, the hapless duo realizes they’re mixed up in the drug trade and cattle smuggling and in way over their heads.

“I just go where the powder blows, as they say” isn’t convincing anybody.

Mom’s campaign turns ugly and personal. Mom and Morgan’s partner’s mom (Elizabeth Perkins) try to intervene in a relationship he is the only one who wants to save — therapy, role-playing, the works.

And Nicky’s dreams of fleeing it all for a six month cruise with Tareq (Gutierrez) on a sabatical minister’s salary seem like dust — or powder — in the wind.

There are enough grace notes in this — Pastor Nicky’s homily-honed storyelling and mediation and lie-on-the-fly skills can be sweet and/or funny.

But Levy struggles to give nuances to his character as the only emotions that register are outrage, panic and desperation. Ortega (of some series called “Welcome to Flatch”) has even fewer notes to hit.

The brash and outrageous co-creator Sennott (:Shiva Baby”) is sorely missed on screen, not off.

And Metcalf lets us see the off-camera stage directions she must have been getting before EVERY SINGLE TAKE.

“Laurie, your EYES didn’t bug out enough last time. Can we go again?”

The first villain we meet, played by Kuzum, is the most interesting and frightening. The rest are a motley crew ranging from rarely amusing to utterly miscast.

“Weeds” alumna Perkins stands out, with Quinn and Ortega making strong impressions and Innanen annoying the hell out of us in ways only Giovanni Ribisi could match.

Completists will stick with “Big Mistakes” even through episodes where the mistakes get bigger, just less funny. But for viewers with less time on their hands, here’s a tip. Watch the first two and laugh, and the third to get a whiff of how it slacks off, and move on.

Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Dan Levy, Taylor Ortega, Laurie Metcalf, Abby Quinn, Jack Innanen, Boran Kuzum, Jacob Gutierez, Mark Ivanir, Darren Goldstein and Elizabeth Perkins

Credits: Created by Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott. A Netflix release.

Running time: Eight episodes @ :31 minutes each

One of the most formative books from my movie fanatic youth was Theodore Gershuny’s “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture: The Anatomy of an All-Star, Big-Budget Multi-Million Dollar Disaster.”

Gershuny’s on-set/in-the-studio observation of the making of Otto Preminger’s greatest debacle, “Rosebud,” remains — I dare say — a definitive eye-opener and an insightful foray into how movies are made and how they can go as wrong as they often do.

Whole epochs in technology, the shape and demographics of the audience and the very business model of making movies have evolved and devolved since 1975. But Gershuny’s all-access account of what it’s like when money, locations, stars and crew are on board the Major Motion Picture train when a production leaves the station with a very bad but “We’ll fix it” script in hand remains a cautionary tale as informative as any investigation of the disaster that was “Heaven’s Gate” or the triumph against the odds that “Apocalypse Now” turned out to be.

Egos, agendas, one hard-drinking “action” star (Robert Mitchum) quits and another (Peter O’Toole) is cast in his place, contempuous sexism and Zionism and retrograde attitudes that play as stunningly tone-deaf today, it’s a “miracle” “Rosebud” ever got the green light. The film was already hard to get one’s hands on in 1980, when the book came out. And despite being a Peter O’Toole fanatic and a (director) Otto Preminger appreciator, I could never make myself watch it when “Rosebud” aired on cable or streamed. Until now.

The film, based on a novel by Joan Hemingway (Ernest’s granddaughter) and Paul Bonnecarrère, came out during a peak era of Middle East unrest, when Palestinians used terrorist acts such as hijackings and the Munich Olympics mass-kidnapping and massacre to call attention to their plight.

They were being displaced and “erased” from their homeland while the whole world looked away.

American foreign policy was very much bent to Israel’s will — even then (something addressed in the film). But there were countries and public figures (Vanessa Redgrave, for one) who had Palestinian sympathies, even then, something John Le Carre’s 1983 thriller “The Little Drummer Girl” touched on.

That’s the climate that Preminger — a directing legend who had given us “Laura,” “Anatomy of a Murder,” “Advise & Consent” and perhaps most tellingly, “Exodus” — made one of his most topical movies, “Rosebud” in.

The global elite would be the target of the film’s smiling, swaggering but generally colorless terrorists. We see them plan and prep their plot when they gather in Corsica. Meanwhile, the daughters of Greek, British, American and other super-rich are gathering on a yacht named after the sled in “Citizen Kane.”

Sabine (Brigitte Ariel) may have taken a leftist French school teacher lover who ruffles her superrich father’s (Claude Dauphin) feathers. But she’s blithely unaware that her money only insulates her from daddy’s fury. There are others watching, waiting and planning their undoing.

The very young Isabelle Huppert and Kim Cattrall are among Sabine’s Rolls Royce chauffeured quintet (Lalla Ward and Debra Berger also co-star), the daughters of an English lord (Peter Lawford) and American senator (ex-New York majoy John Lindsay) among them.

When they’re set-up and nabbed and the yacht’s crew are killed, everybody involved knows the worst has happened. That’s why the (secretly Jewish) shipping tycoon Fargeau (Dauphin) grasps for private help.

Larry Martin (O’Toole) is a Paris-based correspondent for Newsweek, a Brit who’s also a covert hired “fixer” for the CIA. He’s at home in this world, used to tracking down terrorists, dealing with Mossad and mitigating one bad outcome for another. He’s cocky, charming and competent, an expert in getting the answers and results he wants.

Meanwhile, the terrorists make films for The Media, and everybody around the world cooperates to “save these girls,” save for the U.S., which is most easily coerced into doing Israel’s bidding.

As the chase begins and the hunt for the terrorist mastermind (Richard Attenborough, in one of the great casting miscalculations ever) takes our louche anti-hero all over Europe and the Med.

What could go wrong with either side’s best-laid plans, or the movie? Gosh, where does one begin?