The Dutch underworld saga of “Ferry” Bouman finishes with something like a flourish in “Ferry 2,” the sequel to a gritty rise-of-a-“Pill King” in the Amsterdam underworld tale.

But a lot of what precedes that flash finale is pretty frustrating, a movie that’s slow to get going, with less interesting characters and stakes that feel lower because not enough attention is paid to “character arc” this time around.

Frank Lammers made a cunning hulk in the original “Ferry,” an underworld enforcer who got a dirty job done — any job. Here he’s a retired hulk, a man of violence living under an assumed name in a caravan (RV) in the South of Spain, where much of Europe — not just mobsters — moves when their working days are done.

Ferry is 50something, grey haired and the first guy the trailer park activities folk think of when they’re looking for somebody to play Santa for the local kids. As “Andre” he speaks Spanish and seems to get by.

Then his punk grand niece Jezebel (Aiko Beemsterboer) shows up uttering the “You OWE me” (in Dutch with subtitles, or dubbed) cliche at the old man who “wasn’t there for” her after her grandmom and then her mom died. She’s shown up with a lapdog beau, Jeremy (Tobias Kersloot) who happens to know how to “cook” ecstacy.

They’re in the hole with a ruthless mini-kingpin named Lex (Jonas Smulders), and no amount of protesting “I want no part of any of this” from the guy in the Santa suit will do.

Ferry drives them north in that caravan, abruptly ups the ante with the venomous Lex and before he knows it, these “f–king kindergarteners” have him tied up in a scheme to steal the raw materials, find a disused cargo boat to “cook” in and keep this new villain and one old one, the turncoat Dennis (Huub Smit) at bay.

Jez is a flatly-drawn character who grows from impulsive and angry to impulsive and enraged. Ferry’s obligation to her, as “family,” seems dubious. The first time she “changes the plan,” he should have the sense to bail.

But the story decrees that he’s got to stick around and warn the kid that “The longer you wait” to get out, “the harder it gets.” He’s got to be reminded “You got old.” And he has to handle stand-offs with an aged gambler’s unjustified, past-its-expiration-date confidence.

An early heist is handled with a minimum of fuss, and the big final shoot out is in exactly the sort of place you’d expect with exactly the outcome you’ve seen coming.

For such a short thriller, “Ferry” never manages to feel brisk or breathless or even satisfying. Lammers should be irked that they wasted such an interesting character on a movie full of “kindergarten s–t.”

Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug abuse

Cast: Frank Lammers, Aiko Beemsterboer, Tobias Kersloot, Huub Smit, Hamza Othman, Charlie Chan Dagelet and Jonas Smulders.

Credits: Directed by Wannes Destoop, scripted by Geerard Van de Walle and Tibbe van Hoof. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35