The latest film from the Oscar-winning writer of “Dead Poet’s Society” is a sordid, torpid tale of violence and revenge set against the pulse-pounding (cough cough) sport of keno-pool, that oddball boardgame variation of billiards.

“Double Down South” is a languid, drawling bore that’s about as interesting as the games that are its centerpiece. In the 1998 “present” of this picture, keno is explained and explained, and games unfold and we see results, and hear more explanations.

Damned if we don’t know less about this arcane game at the end than we do the first time our lithe, tight-tank-topped heroine (Lili Simmons) shows up at an antebellum mansion gone to seed and turned into a diner and pool hall and asks to be taught the sport.

“Holy s–t! That’s a double AND a Montgomery!”

The hell you say?

Diana (Simmons) rolls up to Nick’s place in a rusty pickup, her own pool cue in hand. She’s come to “the keno capital of the world,” BFE Georgia, to pick up keno from the pot-bellied, Confederate-flag fetishizing locals.

Diana is a born distraction, with her highlights, tattoos and belly button ring.

“You come to shoot pool?” One-eyed “Little Nick” (Igby Rigney) wants to know

“Didn’t come to adopt a puppy,” she purrs. Yeah, she’s a tough-one.

But is she tough enough to hang with the veteran players, and with Nick-the-owner, given a venomous, lecherous edge by horror movie/biker series (“Sons of Anarchy”) icon Kim Coates? He’s on her like racism on a redneck, because he sees dollars in the dish that played her first-ever keno in his joint.

“I just kind of lost my ass out there,” she protests.

“Still quite the ass.”

She will be “schooled” in this pool-hustle variation by Little Nick, Nick and Old Nick (veteran character actor Tom Bower), the owner who passed this set-designed-gone-to-seed mansion/pool parlor on to middle-aged Nick.

That Nick is scary. That Nick carries a bottom half of a pool cue he uses to beat customers, foes and proteges who get out of line. That Nick lost his fingers recently because of some deal with went South (“further” South). And that Nick sees this “distraction” as an “attraction” for his business.

Players in this “man’s game,” a billiards variation that is “all finesse,” will flock to Nick’s when they hear about Diana and decide to match up against this Southern fried sexpot in the flesh. Or so Nick thinks.

Writer-director Tom Schulman, who counts “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” “Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag” and the epic Eddie Murphy bomb “Holy Man” among his scripts, hasn’t had many credits in this millenium. He scripted the badly-reviewed “Anatomy of Hope” TV movie for J.J. Abrams, and wrote the flop that drove Gene Hackman into retirement — “Welcome to Mooseport.”

This isn’t anybody’s idea of a comeback. He’s lost whatever he knew about “pace” and seems mostly content to collect cliches to adorn this leaden, formulaic pool hustle movie with, and share the ever-changing “rules” on how one bets on keno.

Racist, sexist Nick has secrets Diana must learn. Little Nick is the one who passes them on. But Little Nick has his own story to tell — how he ended up with one eye.

Simmons, a veteran of series TV (“True Detective,” “Westworld,” “Ray Donovan” and she was Catwoman in “Gotham”) doesn’t embarass herself here, despite playing a character both nakedly obvious and badly underwritten.

Coates always gives fair value, with that trademark dyed mop of curls and goatee signaling the menace he’s often called on to portray.

“DROP the psychoanalysis of the psycho,” he says, as everybody tries to fill Diana in on one S&M foe she faces.

Justin Marcel McManus plays Nick’s kryptonite, Beaumont DuBinion, a Black man who is better at this arcane game than Nick. But is he better than Diana, now that Nick’s lost a lot of fingers?

One big problem here is the simple fact that the game Schulman built this around isn’t interesting or exciting on the screen. Keno, as we hear, isn’t a “power” game with billaird cues and balls. So there’s no dramatic “CLACK” to the break, no way to whiz-bang photogragh and edit the dull-but-difficult shots, the putt-putt/bingo style put-the-ball-in-the-big-right-hole nature of it all.

The games are staged, blocked, scripted and “called” in ways guaranteed to rob the narrative of its “Why should we care?” requirement. Curling has more thrills.

That’s not the only reason “Double Down South” crawls along, 70 minutes of story sloppily packaged in a 124 minute movie. But it’s a big one.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Lili Simmons, Kim Coates, Igby Rigney, Justin Marcel McManus, Rebecca Lines and Tom Bower.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tom Schulman. A Level 33 release.

Running time: 2:04