“Checkmate” is an Argentine action that is una pelicula caseosa.

Cheesy? It’s a picture that wouldn’t last past its opening credits without a never-ending parade of cliches, tired genre tropes and banal, over-familiar plot elements.

It begins with the “retired” agent (Adrián Suar, of “I Married a Dumbass”) laying low in the outskirts of Tigre, trapping an intruder in the snare he has set in the woods surrounding his home. It’s his 16 year-old niece (Fiorella Indelicato) who has shown up to find out “what you and Dad did for a living.”

They’ve barely re-established their relationship, with Juana showing off her mad chess-playing skills, when a team of assassins storm the house in a hail of gunfire.

They shoot and shoot and shoot, and then are killed and killed and killed. Inexplicably, the last assassin tries to kidnap Agent Duque. All that bloodshed and intent-to-kill, and somebody NEEDS Duque for a “job?”

That’s what we figure out when Juana is nabbed as our intrepid undercover man is calling up his old “team” for help. Some fey villain (Mike Amigorena) who calls himself “Rey” (king), wears too much makeup and keeps capes around as part of his vast wardrobe needs Duque, nicknamed “Dwarf,” to grab something out of a top security lab.

Duque calls in logistics man Malcosido (Benjamín Amadeo) whose way of coping with his bruxism is talking people to death, the observant Israeli Jew Iair (Tsahi Halevi) who must find a way to answer the phone, get on a plane and work his computer expertise without actually working on Shabbat, Mexican bomb expert and pilot Molo (nepo baby José Eduardo Derbez) and mistress of disguises Sofia (Maggie Civantos), whose testiness tells us that she and Duque used to be an item.

They must “Mission: Impossible” their way into this lab, retrieve something and/or someone, and swap that for Juana.

The exploding cars are impressive enough, with or without digitally-added flames. The super secure “lab” settings pass muster.

But every attempt at sending up movies like “Mission: Impossible” falls flat. A few jokes about Israeli Spanish accents and the ways Malcosido (which translates as “bad at sewing”) can be mispronouned might play in the home country. But the light bickering goes nowhere and the plot twists are so over-used there’s nothing left in them.

Not exciting, not funny, not quite sexy and pretty violent, considering the tone they seemed to be going for, “Checkmate” can’t even manage a draw.

Rating: TV-14, violence, profanity

Cast: Adrián Suar, Maggie Civantos, José Eduardo Derbez, Tsahi Halevi, Fiorella Indelicato, Charo López, Benjamín Amadeo and Mike Amigorena

Credits: Directed by Jorge Nisco, scripted by Leandro Calderone, Luis Bernardez, Matías Dinardo, Andrés Restrepo. An MGM release on Amazo.n Prime.

Running time: 1:44