“The Shakedown” is an intermittently amusing dark comedy about blackmail and the “accidents” that happen when inexperienced folks overreact to it.

An over-achieving “wellness and medical” insurance broker irks his dopey mistress and she threatens to expose him, wrecking his happy family and affluent life, or at least the illusion of it.

As is the way of such comedies, exercise/wellness-obsessed Justin Diamond (Carl Beukes) conveniently has a “black sheep” sibling, Dovi (Emmanuel Castis), an ex-con who might be able to “scare” indiscrete Marika (Berenine Barbier) out of her attempted “shakedown.”

Dovi, whom Justin keeps at arm’s length and away from his family (Dovi has to crash Justin’s daughter’s bat mitvah), has words of warning for Justin even before things go very wrong. “It’s a dirty world.” And when the “scare her” turns into blunders, beatings and a death, he’s even more blunt.

“Now you’ve got dirt on your hands.”

He means “blood,” but we get it. Justin’s whole house of cards — the rented Porsche, the veneer of “success,” could crash down around him. Maybe his rabbi (Adam Neill) can help, offer a few words of moral equivocation and such. Sure. A “donation” is suggested.

Maybe Dovi’s warnings that the rabbi is a gambling addict are true!

For his debut feature, director and co-writer Ari Kruger peppers his dialogue with Hebrew phrases and Afrikaans slang. He samples insurance and wellness pitches (way too many of those) and peeks into a community that practices a certain insularity but which preys on its own.

Dovi grills their dementia-suffering mother to find out who among the congregation of their shul is heading out of the country on vacation, and Kruger then serves up hapless “blue cap gang” crooks (Zander Tyler and David Isaacs) who then go to rob their houses, tying up Black servants as they do. They’re the perfect pair to call on to “scare” a blackmailer, and botch the job.

Diversions into sex predelictions (an Antonio Banderas sex doll) and the like included, there still isn’t nearly enough funny stuff going on here to recommend “The Shakedown.”

And one can’t help but notice how retrograde this “ethnic” comedy is. It’s been decades since I’ve seen a South African film this whitewashed.

How do you excuse setting your movie in Cape Town, South Africa, and erase all the Black people — save for a housekeeper and delivery man — from it?

Anybody with a memory for history can probably explain that.

Rating: Unrated, violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Carl Beukes, Emmanuel Castis, Julia Anastasopoulos, Berenice Barbier, Adam Neill and Milton Schorr.

Credits: Directed by Ari Kruger, scripted by Ari Kruger and Daniel Zimbler. An MGM/Amazon release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:44