“Hunting with Tigers” is a heist picture with two heists — one involving cars and motorcycles, the other a boat. The second heist is a prison break from a heavily-guarded courthouse.

The script checks-off the requisite boxes of the genre — “assembling the team,” “casing the joint,” procuring the vehicles and puzzling over possible double-crosses as “the kid” trains with firearms.

“If you keep up the Dalai Lama act, we’ll never get anywhere!”

Our anti-hero is troubled by flashbacks to the afternoon his life was saved as the man he owes a debt to mowed down mobsters to do that saving.

And “Tigers” is French, so we expect the action beats to pop, the editing and the acting to pull us into the plot and the sizzling chases and whatnot.

But it’s a bust. The build-up is desultory, the payoff laughably French. There’s nothing funnier than a shoot-out involving hundreds of rounds punctuated by a screenwritten cop shouting “Don’t shoot, they’re unarmed!” (in French, or dubbed) when the murderous villains run out of bullets and options.

The occasional flashy shot or trunk-lid cam race through Paris doesn’t make this thriller make more sense or even engage the viewer.

The handsome Waël Sersoub (“MILF”) stars as Malik, who dashes home from Spain in his BMW convertible to be by his mother’s side for his stepfather’s trial. Serge (Vincent Perez) was in a gang that attempted a heist that went wrong and turned deadly. Malik, we learn, is also working the illegal side of the tracks.

A more famous armed robber, Chérif (Omar Salim) is implicated in Serge’s plot. But his lawyer insists he’s being railroaded. That lawyer (Géraldine Nakache) summons Malik to her office witn an offer and a taunt.

He can “help” his stepdad by delivering a message, in Spain, to another gangster. That made man might be able to bust Serge and Chérif out. If Malik had his dad’s bravery and genes, she implies, he’d do it.

Besides, she knows what’s in those flashbacks Malik is having. He was a kid, got into a deadly jam and Serge got him out of it.

Malik meets Avi (Sofiane Zermani), who owes Chérif, and Avi adds older hardcase Ange (Olivier Martinez, whose credits go back to “The Horseman on the Roof” and “Unfaithful”) and reformed-crook turned sofa-salesman Azzedine (Samir Guesmi) to their gang.

Because Malik is now a lot more than an errand boy.

Their “payment” and financing for this will come after they pull off the robbery of an armed convoy delivering a mountain of kickback-cash to a soccer star’s agent. Once they do that, it’s on to court, where the trial of the several suspects is underway.

The first gambit makes (a little) more sense and has more action to it — hiding within an upscale Arab wedding party car convoy, then shutting down a busy tunnel. The second seems somewhat suicidal, only because it is. We can tell that even the screenwriters throw up their hands and shout “WhatEVER, they GET AWAY!” at several points.

There’s nobody to truly empathize with and fear for, as Malik is too passive to care about and other characters are even more thinly drawn. Still, he’s pretty enough to have a gorgeous girlfriend (Cassandra Cano) willing to stick with him through thick and thin. And maybe a cut of the cash.

French thrillers are generally closer to the cutting edge than whatever comes out of Hollywood. The coolest stuff we see in heist pictures from major American studios is often cadged from a recent French film, or directed by a Hollywood-hired French director.

Director and co-writer Jérémie Guez shows more flashes of competence than inspiration here. His film is slow and clunky, beginning with promise, ending with the last of a string of third act let-downs. Hollywood may wait a bit before luring him West, because he’s got to show us more than this.

Rating: TV-16, violence

Cast: Waël Sersoub, Géraldine Nakache, Sofiane Zermani, Samir Guesmi,Vincent Perez, Omar Salim, Cassandra Cano and Olivier Martinez

Credits: Directed by Jérémie Guez, scripted by
Jérémie Guez and Louis Lagayette. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:49