A drowning marine being slapped awake — while 25 or so feet UNDER water — may be the silliest event I’ve ever seen portrayed in a combat film.

That’s not enough to ruin the compact Dutch thriller “Invasion!” But it points to a laundry list of other sins.

It’s about a South American assault on the Netherlands’ ABC Islands, three of the premier Caribbean tourist destinations. But cut the film a little (Ok, a LOT of) slack and the almost-ripped-from-the-headlines thriller passes the time easily enough.

It’s about an unstable Latin American regime that is Venezuela in all but name, a place where a teetering strong man invades Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, for reasons that at first confuse, then seem more clearly convoluted, corrupt and self-serving.

The Dutch have an ultramodern coast guard patrol ship, with rescue helicopter, on station, or close enough, a nearly empty marine base, and a bunch of marine trainees summoned back from maneuvres in Belize to respond.

But the home government in The Hague is just as thrown as the Curaçao’s tourists, subjected to rocket attacks from a warship off shore, and the caught-flat-footed marines.

One and all shout “What do these guys WANT?” in Dutch with English subtitles.

But one family is impacted by this most of all, and most pivotal to this situation’s resolution. Andy (Tarikh Janssen) is a marine finishing up his training only to learn his resort staffer father has been injured in the assault. Brother Judsel (Jasha Rudge) is on the Zr. MS Groningen, the coast guard ship that deploys and fetches those marine trainees. And Judsel’s wife Isa (Ziarah Janssen) is trapped on the island, staying in the hospital with her injured father-in-law.

The Dutch ambassador (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) to (not Venezuala) is taken as one of the least able and most cowardly members of the diplomatic corps by his superiors in The Hague. So naturally that ambassador flees the “security” of the embassy.

So now there are three islands under assault and occupation, with casualties, and a rogue diplomat to retrieve, all with just a handful of marines, a few trainees, and a coast guard ship with a non-combat chopper.

The training scenes are pro forma, but the combat sequences are competently handled, especially the early scramble by a marine major (Raymond Thiry) to arm and ammo-up his confused handful of soldiers on a base tucked on the port side of the capital of Willemstad.

That’s straight out of “From Here to Eternity.”

The “complications” that seem to comprise this “diplomatic misunderstanding” are credible in an age of deluded “strong man” rulers, rampant corruption and global instability.

And while the film might allow a racially patronizing moment as local lad Andy is ordered to man up, do his duty and not try to “quit” and dash home to his injured father, the whole Dutch colony-turned-“dependency” debate muddies the waters on what other nations might help.

The United States? Not likely. “The one (The Netherlands) who’s stolen” these possessions has to retrieve them, the Dutch guiltily note.

When Andy does make it ashore, one of Curaçao’s many monuments to the shame of the slave trade looms over him. So the messaging suggests that this whole situation is a lot more complicated than the “tourist paradise” repuation of the place, the comically-named Hoegaarden beer served all around and an island decorated with that Dutch Caribbean word for “Everything’s sweet and hunky dory,” “dushi,” which is totally the vibe of that arid, rocky tropical vacation destination.

(Footnote, the logo photo for this blog is of the derelict Cinelandia cinema in Willemstad, taken by me while there.)

But the best one can say for this plot is that while truth may be the “first casualty of war,” melodrama is the last. Too many situations take hokey, predictable turns, from the tests of “first female marine” (Ortál Vriend) to the marine afraid of heights expected to parachute to the rescue to the one that highlights on an ongoing refugee dilemma — Venezuelans flee to the islands, by small boat, in times of turmoil in their country.

The Dutch civilian government is mocked while only military folk seem to have answers, even if rogue members of their ranks have to improvise solutions to crises, and unlikely rescues take on a magical thinking/”infallible military” tint.

The performances are perfunctory, with only the amusingly irritating van Aschat registering. The pace is uneven, lacking the urgency a 90 minute thriller demands.

Director Bobby Boermans and screenwriters Philip Delmaar and Lucas de Waard bite off bits of assorted “behind enemy lines” thrillers and “Argo” and park it all in a lovely location that they get precious little out of.

The point of view shifts from the bridge of the ship, to the jungle to The Hague to combat on Curaçao proper, and guess which one the movie abandons before the halfway mark?

And then there’s the slap heard all around the Caribbean, the one delivered underwater, because you do what it takes to “wake up” a drowning person. Right.

Rating: unrated, combat violence, profanity

Cast: Tarikh Janssen, Ortál Vriend, Gijs Blom, Jasha Rudge, Fedja van Huêt, Raymond Thiry and Gijs Scholten van Aschat

Credits: Directed by Bobby Boermans, scripted by Philip Delmaar and Lucas de Waard. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:31