Movie Nation

Producer-writer-director Harald Franklin didn’t want any confusion about the inspiration for his movie, ” “The Glorious Seven.” He put images from “Seven Samurai” and “The Magnificent Seven” right in the opening credits of “Glorious.”

Quick question though, Harald. Have you ever watched either film? Because aside from the fact that there are (roughly, give or take, maybe more) “seven” hero/mercenaries in your Nicaraguan-set action epic, there’s virtually nothing else that connects with the earlier films.

These seven are mercenaries who take $2 million to go rescue a kidnapped trophy wife (Julia Mulligan) of a ruthless Latin American land baron (Fernando Carrera). As we’ve seen the kidnapper (Fernando Corral) freed from a chain gang by cutthroats who killed the police who guarded him, and we’ve witnessed the “massacre” that was a part of that kidnapping, and we’ve ALSO seen the sexual assaults that the brutish land baron uses to keep his imprisoned wife in line, the viewer faces a quandary.

Who exactly do we root for here?

We’re no longer in the hands of impoverished warriors of feudal Japan or the Old West fighting for their next meal, fighting for embattled, helpless villagers against rapacious bandits.

So “The Glorious Seven” starts with no real point of view. Then it dallies and stumbles and takes forever to get underway as Guerra (Jerry Kwarteng) and his mixed martial arts partner Ryan (Maurice Nash) are hired and  re-assemble their team.

Even that’s wrong. The way every movie from the assorted “sevens” to “The Expendables” introduces the principals is in showcase moments where, say, Toshiro Mifune shows off his character’s untrained fighting style or James Coburn demonstrates skills with a knife.

Here, we go to Russia to round up an old friend who has an old beef with Guerra (Maksim Kolesnichenko), or visit the bar/club where Dennis (Ilker Kurt), a sometimes arms-dealer ogles his pole dancer.

She’s the most heavily-clad pole dancer in the history of poles, dressed as a flamenco or belly dancer.

After the opening kidnapping, the team-formation and everything after that which we’d call “story” is sluggish, slapdash, stuff and nonsense — none of it entertaining, or even ridiculous enough to be any fun.

The shootouts are OK — well-staged and shot. And the collection of firearms…interesting. One underling is running around with a WWII vintage Thompson submachine gun. The prop house must have run out of pump shotguns and AK47s to rent.

They filmed this thing in Spain, Costa Rica (passing for Thailand), Ukraine and Rome.

And the dialogue sounds like the sorts of grating, clumsy usages that would earn you a C in ESL (English as a Second Language) class.

“More than five years before, he took five millions dollars from me!” Before, what? “We haven’t heard a thing from him. And nor from her.”

It’s so…off that you start listening to the voices and looking at the mouths to see if the whole enterprise is Eastern European and dubbed.

Far too many of the voices of supporting players sound like one guy did all the looping. Not a cardinal sin in itself, as the earliest James Bond movies were looped to death — one actor’s voice covering a slew of bit players.

But in “The Glorious Seven” (also titled “The Glorious Seven Reloaded” and opening March 12), it’s just another sign that what we’re watching is somewhere between an exceptionally sloppy B-movie and a very slick D-movie.

C?

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, a suggested rape

Cast:  Jerry Kwarteng, Marina Kinski, Fernando Carrera, Ilker Kurt, Julia Mulligan, Maurice Nash, Sara Sálamo, Ender Atac, Fernando Corral

Credits:  Directed by Harald Franklin. An Uncork’d Release.

Running time: 1:33

Consider this — the “second” “Lego” movie isn’t the second one at all. “Lego” has licensed plenty of direct-to-video titles using their toys, and there was that “Ninjago” thing and “Lego Batman.”

So “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part,” even if it isn’t as giddy as the first big screen Warner Animation Lego film, is a part of a franchise that’s over-exposed.

That helps explain how “The Second Part” is not reaching its projected $50 million opening weekend. Deadline.com is now saying that $33 million is more in line with where it will end up by midnight Sunday.

“Lego Batman” did $53, opening in early Feb., “Lego Movie” did over $60.

Even taking into account Deadline’s notorious underestimation of Saturday  takes on kiddie movies, (maybe $40 is within reach), it’s still falling short. And others are projecting even lower — $31.

As I said, they’ve over-exposed and Warners and Lego have watered

down the brand.

Taraji P. Henson is having a hard time in star vehicles built around her. “What Men Want” is a winner, a better picture than “Proud Mary” and a genre that more suits her talents. It’s managing $18-19 million, per Deadline. Not as much as one might have hoped.

It could have a nice long run if it holds audience next weekend, but $25 would have been more in line with what this picture should have produced.

As I said earlier this week, I think Paramount Players/BET left money on the table by suppressing reviews until the day of release. It’s not bad, the laughs land and she plays the hell out of her part. Funny.  Marketing let Taraji down.

“Cold Pursuit” doesn’t seem to have suffered inordinately from Liam Neeson’s confession of dark, racist thoughts 40 years ago — a $10 million weekend. It might have reached $12-14, but a Summit/Lionsgate non-franchise thriller? $10 is all you could hope for.

“Green Book” is starting to get possible “Best Picture” legs, with its re-release pushing it well into the top ten and staying there.

“Miss Bala” is plunging, number 10 with a bullet. Pointed downward.

It was a case that made headlines around the planet, that set up a million punch lines and led to a thousand stand-up bits and numerous “Saturday Night Live” sketches.

But we do we really know or more importantly remember about June 23, 1993, when Lorena Bobbitt took an eight inch carving knife and lopped off and then discarded the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt?

Veteran documentary producer/director Joshua Rofé directed “Lorena,” the new Amazon Originals four-part documentary (available to stream Feb. 15). But Jordan Peele produced it, and the film reflects the sensibilities of the comedian and sketch performer turned director and Oscar-winning screenwriter.

It’s dark. It’s a tad horrific. It’s cautionary, even. And it’s funny.

Best line? John Bobbitt noting the frantic police search for his missing member. “Good thing they found it. Would’ve looked funny on a milk carton.”

“Lorena” begins with “The Night Of,” lets us meet (then, and now) the married couple whose tumultuous marriage ended that night, and follows them through the roller coaster of their individual trials.

Did she attack her unemployed, drunken husband for being a selfish lover in a fit of irrational rage? Or was the ex-Marine abusing her, finally pushing Lorena to the point where she snapped, causing her to lash out?

The film is generously peppered with context as we are led first to one conclusion, then another, back and forth over the four episodes.

Here’s Steve Harvey joking about with her recently on his chat show about “the one act every man every man fears the most.”Back then, we hear Hugh Downs on ABC’s “20/20” describing Bobbitt as “the woman who did the unthinkable.”

Howard Stern hosted a beauty pageant/fundraiser for John Bobbitt, casting him as a judge for the 1994 event, chat shows invited him and his outraged brothers on to vent at “that woman.” Back then, we see Andrew Dice Clay, Robin Williams and others working the act of violence into their own acts.

And yet, even then, women took a decidedly different view of what happened that night and who the real victim was. As a nurse on duty at the hospital that night remembers, “I thought, ‘God, what did he do to make her do something like that?”

The four part film introduces us to reporters and lawyers, jurors and the surgeon who did the “re-attachment.”

A chuckling urologist laughs about the penis which was “lost in action” as we hear about the police search for the “member,” and testimony and real transcripts about hospital and police dispatchers using euphemisms about needing to “salvage this man’s dignity” to keep from alerting the news media about what had just happened in Manassas.

An “extremely drunk” victim, a crime scene spattered with blood, with domestic abuse pamphlets, an Ecuadoran native whose English wasn’t great telling police that she did it because her husband had an orgasm and she didn’t — there’s a lot to chew on (ahem) here.

As we meet and hear from the principals, then and now, “Lorena” gives us an appreciation for the times — post Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill and “Tail Hook” and the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. And we start to see what a cultural watershed this heinous and yet laughed-about act was.

The word “penis” made it into the mainstream media, “He said/she said” was further cemented into the national psyche, “marital rape” and domestic violence attracted attention anew (the O.J. murders occurred a year later).

As we track the ebb and flow of reputations, legal jeopardy, public opinion and the sort of discourse the case attracted back then and over the years, “Lorena” — which can seem too flippant at times — reminds us of what we’ve forgotten and how far we’ve come even as we ponder if the juries, way back when, got it right or got it wrong.

But as it does it answers the question most fundamental to long-form true crime series. It keeps you involved and piques your interest just enough to keep you watching, from “The Night Of” the crime to its chronicle of America’s understanding of “The Cycle of Abuse.”

Bobbit, John Wayne Bobbit, Whoopi Goldberg

Credits: Directed by Joshua Rofe. An Amazon Originals streaming series.

Running time: 1:00 per episode

The best you can say for “The Prodigy” is that it’s an efficient shock-and-fright delivery device.

Cold, clinical and mechanical, the jolts — cheap shocks created via a quick edit and sudden SHRIEK on the soundtrack — are timed out, 8-10 minutes apart.

The scenario is strictly horror boilerplate — a brutal serial killer dies at the same time a little boy is born prematurely. “Reincarnation,” says the shrink-approved expert (Colm Feore) to the boy’s increasingly desperate mom (Taylor Schilling of “Orange is the New Black”).

And she, uh, buys it. Few questions asked.

She was so proud. Her baby, Miles, has “David Bowie eyes” (two different colors). “He’s special” with intelligence “off the charts,” the experts tell her and husband John (Peter Mooney).

Yes, he’s a tad anti-social and creepy. But when he hits age 8, Miles (Jackson Robert Scott) is taking a monkey wrench (literally) to classmates, booby-trapping the baby sitter and getting growled at by the family dog, who doesn’t know WHO is in that kid’s body.

A dead giveaway in such movies about malevolent kids? Miles is a little too “into” Halloween.

The various children playing Miles, with Jackson Robert Scott being the main one but younger David Kohlsmith making an exceptionally creepy impression, are convincing.

Schilling has to carry the picture, and she doesn’t give us much in the line of pathos, empathy, terror or love, the emotional gamut her character runs.  That turns “The Prodigy” heartless. No wonder her kid’s a mess.

I found “The Prodigy” to be a pitiless experience, maddeningly illogical in the ways the parents (Mom more than Dad) accept the abrupt “treatment” and “study” changing to “This kid’s a killer reincarnated” “science” and excuse the kid’s moments of violence and amorality — “It’s OK. It was an accident.”

Still, the frights, with Mom seeing the hand-chopping serial killer’s face (Paul Fauteux) on her little boy’s body, the stabbings and threats of worse to come (hilariously foreshadowed to death) deliver the requisite pulse-stopping punch.

If that’s all you’re hoping for in a horror picture, fine. If not, you’ve been warned. Yes, there’s a dog in the cast.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, disturbing and bloody images, a sexual reference and brief graphic nudity

Cast: Jackson Robert Scott, Taylor Schilling, Colm Feore, Brittany Allen

Credits: Directed by Nicholas McCarthy, script by Jeff Buhler.   An Orion release

Running time: 1:32

So what’s Liam Neeson’s MOVIE like?

“Cold Pursuit” was the subject he was supposed to be talking up when the ex-boxer revealed his deepest, darkest thoughts about revenge and race at an awful moment in his distant past. Everybody’s weighed in on that.

I’m from Virginia. I’m just relieved he wasn’t photographed in blackface.

The movie? Well, it’s earned raves from people reviewing it before he cast that pall over it, but more importantly, by reviewers who apparently never saw the superior Norwegian version of this morbidly mordant tale of creative, bloody revenge in the snow.

I’m a huge fan of the original film, “In Order of Disappearance,” which was one of the ten best movies of 2016 I thought. So I was keenly aware of being at a disadvantage seeing “Pursuit.”

It’s not just that remembering the story — a sturdy, steady rural snowplow operator’s son is murdered, and so he kills his way up the mob ladder to get to the gangster who ordered the hit — weighs on the picture and makes the film play slower. From its generic title to the forced, over-reaching laughs (the biggest failing) and the sadistic bent Neeson gives a character who seemed to be more buttoned down, making it up as he went and getting in over his head repeatedly when Stellan Skarsgard played “the snowplow Man,” “Pursuit” feels like an inferior knock-off.

Hell, I even mentioned Neeson in my review of “Disappearance,” way back when, suggesting how NOT to cast/remake this. The Irish man-mountain is too often cast as someone with “particular skills,” when the glory in Skarsgard’s out-of-his-depth turn is how it takes on a DIY whimsy even as he’s going down a deadly path of no return. Conversely, it’s no surprise that the gigantic ex-boxer is capable of violence.

Still, it’s not a terrible thriller and Neeson is solid, as always, in it.

The same director, Hans Petter Moland, shows up to put Neeson through his “Taken” paces. The setting is in the mountains outside of Denver instead of Norway. The character’s name has been changed from “Nils Dickman” to “Nels Coxman,” a limp joke (ahem). We see more of what happened to the son, unraveling that mystery more readily.

Laura Dern plays the wife/mother who is broken by their son’s death. The wife’s madness over that loss is what drives the snowplow man over the edge as well, grabbing his hunting rifle and considering suicide before figuring revenge is a dish best served ice cold. Here, that wife motivating the husband hook is watered down.

“We didn’t know our son!”

Coxman gets a name from a surviving friend of his son’s. From Dante he goes after Speedo, Speedo to Limbo, Limbo to Santa.

Each is commemorated, post mortem, with a black screen inter-title topped by a cross (or Star of David), their “real” name, upon their death or as the first film succinctly put it, “In Order of Disappearance.”

“What IS it with the nicknames?” he asks his brother (William Forsythe), a rich and retired made man from the local mob scene. Windex and Mustang and Bone have yet to be contended with. The Eskimo is the nickname of an African American hitman (Arnold Pinnock).

“You want somebody ‘iced,’ you call The Eskimo.”

The villain in chief is Viking (Tom Bateman, not bad), who inherited the mob which Coxman is picking off. He’s a micro-managing “businessman” going through a divorce (Julia Jones) as he obsesses on his bullied son’s (Nicholas Holmes) diet.

Emmy Rossum plays a young cop who sees a gang war erupting in tiny Kehoe, Colorado, which her grizzled partner (John Doman) doesn’t want to see.

The cleverest ingredient in the adaptation is changing the rival gang that gets mixed up in this slaughter from the Serbian mob to a local Native American drug gang. Tom Jackson is White Bull, their leader, who issues a thunderous call to arms when his son, too, is killed in the mayhem. It’s the most emotional moment in the movie, pretty much the only one.

I laughed all the way through “Order,” but barely found an amusing moment in “Pursuit.” The first film was dry and kind of droll in its over-the-top the violence and ways Skarsgard’s Dickman stumbled into it. This is just business as usual for a Neeson film, savage bloody violence with teeth-and-nose-busting fists, bloody streaks on the snow as he hauls corpses to the raging river to make them disappear.

A favorite early moment, Nels Coxman has beaten all he can out of a low-level mobster, and with just a look, Neeson lets us see what Coxman is figuring out. He can’t leave this guy to ID him, can’t have that sort of unfinished business interrupting his hunt. He decides to strangle him, and not being accomplished at that, struggles and makes a hash of that.

The terror of being chased through a canyon of snow banks by a snowplow is shown, but underdeveloped. The murders come in bursts, turning the middle acts of the movie into a sagging bore.

I didn’t hate “Cold Pursuit,” but it’s not the giddy darker-than-dark murder-comedy that “In Order of Disappearance” was, and that this film’s trailers (Memorably choreographed to “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” a MUCH better title, BTW) promised.

Fans of Neeson, who has no flair for comedy, even deadpan death comedy, will find this perfectly tolerable. But if you REALLY want to see this story done right, pursue the Norwegian original, “In Order of Disappearance.”

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, drug material, and some language including sexual references

Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Emmy Rossum, William Forsyth, Tom Jackson.

Credits: Directed by Hans Petter Moland, script by Frank Baldwin, based on the Kim Fupz Aakeson script to the Norwegian movie, “In Order of Disappearance.” A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:58

I wasn’t privileged to get a preview of this horror pic, opening tonight.

So there’s nothing for it but to Get to the Regal Winter Park Village Stadium 20 on time to see “The Prodigy” on opening night. Looks scary. Horror movies titled “Prodigy” often are.

Might Orion Pictures preview their future releases a bit more widely? Let’s hope so. Hey, Orion! Big fan, longtime fan, etc.

Even named my sailboat after you.

Maybe next time, help a brother out?

Everybody’s review of “What Men Want” posted in the wee hours of Thursday AM, thanks to a silly and absurdly restrictive embargo Paramount (Paramount Players/BET) slapped on this latest mid-winter Taraji P. Henson outing.

She can say, “At LEAST they weren’t Screen Gems,” which dumped “Proud Mary” into theaters in a previous January, leaving a promising misfire of a star vehicle to its fate.

But nothing says the studio isn’t keen on a picture’s chances like not letting reviews show up before opening night.

And as lowdown as this farce is, it’s not bad. It’s full of laughs.

Sure, reviews are going to be mixed.

But it’s tracking even higher on the more selective-about-their-critics-site Metacritic.

The earliest ones I saw were from IMDb “users” who are among the class of gimme-free-tickets folk the studios call “passholes,” for obvious reasons. They’re older and most often white and the earliest “buzz” from them was they’re still mad Mel Gibson isn’t in it.

“What Men Want” was always going to do OK, with or without “Girls’ Trip” reviews. But I can’t help but wonder if BET didn’t let Paramount leave money on the table, not letting critics sing its praises for a few days before it opened.

Holding reviews back implies “damaged goods,” even though those of us who previewed it early this week knew better, Paramount didn’t want us to say so.

I had to double check, to make sure this wasn’t a fake trailer.

But I won’t lie. I laughed.

Samuel L. Jackson has to teach the trade to “junior.” Jessie T. Usher (under my radar, here are his mostly-TV credits) plays the kid as punchline in this sequel/reboot.

But Richard Roundtree’s here to remind us that he was “one bad mutha…” long before Samuel L. owned the description.

Regina Hall gets the biggest laugh in this trailer for “Shaft,” which opens June 14.

Whatever Taraji P. Henson is “on” in “What Men Want,” sign me up for a bottle of that.

Her amped up, go-for-broke, lowdown, dirty and broad performance in this distaff spin on the Mel Gibson “I can hear the thoughts of the opposite sex” hit, “What Women Want,” has two things you want in a screen comedy — desperation and laughs.

It’s so long that it’s no surprise they can’t make an end of it and let the film exit gracefully. “Men Want” reaches for every low-hanging-fruit joke it can grasp. But this Adam Shankman (“Hairspray”) farce tries to make Henson a one-woman “Girls’ Trip,” and doesn’t miss that lowdown and raunchy mark by far.

Henson plays Ali Davis, almost the only female agent in Atlanta’s high-powered Summit World Management agency, a sharp-tongued, sharp-elbowed workaholic who handles many of the world’s greatest female athletes.

She’s “crushing it” to such a degree that she and her supportive but long-suffering assistant (Josh Brener, fun) are SURE she’s about to make partner. When the boss (Brian Bosworth, perfect) doesn’t pitch that promotion her way, she blows a fuse. He dismisses her with A) “You don’t connect with men” and B) “Stay in your lane.”

Our Ali’s a “ball-buster” who has an “all about you” rep with her colleagues. She’s a tigress when she beds a handsome bartender (Aldis Hodge), and savagely selfish. There’s something she’s not “getting.”

Stereotypical gay assistant Brandon has to send her to a cousin’s bachelorette party to cool off. And the psychic the ladies hire as entertainment has a hand in changing Ali’s life.

Singer/actress Erykah Badu threatens to steal the movie as “Sister,” a flake of the first order, server of “Haitian tea” that makes Ali wild. Was it spiked?

“I’m 19 years sober,” Sister harrumphs. “If you don’t count the weed, the peyote and the crack.”

As potent as the tea is, it still takes a blow to the head to make Ali start hearing men’s inner thoughts.

From “I gotta get my prostate checked” and “This whole wearing ladies’ underwear thing” on the street, to “Pretend I’m working, pretend I’m working, pretend I’m working” from colleagues, girlfriend has ALL access. Now how might that be helpful is she’s trying to sign the hottest NBA prospect out there, winning over his crazy, changed-his-last-name-to-“Dolla” dad (Tracy Morgan)?

It’s a cluttered, messy movie, stooping to pander, here and there — in between the fart jokes, Pete Davidson (gay office drone) appearances and F-bombs.

But there’s a breezy, improvised best-joke-on-the-set wins feel to a lot of the zingers. Maybe Wendi McClendon-Covey didn’t come up with the not-quite-Born Again party girl Olivia character on her own, but her one-liners sound like the work of an improv vet, and co-star of “The Goldbergs.”

“Before I started following The Lord, I followed 2 Live Crew on tour!”

A men–only poker game Ali crashes features Shaq, Grant Hill and NBA owner Mark Cuban, who gives us the rich guy’s take on the 99 percent.

“Gotta stop playing poker with poor people!”

No, it’s not on a par with “Bridesmaids” or “Girls’ Trip.” The sentimental stuff, the piercing “insights” Ali picks up about men, are instantly forgettable.

But Henson plays the hell out of this part, no subtlety allowed. And the over-supply of one-liners and an abundance of silly supporting players (Jason Jones of TV’s “The Detour,” Richard “Shaft” Roundtree as Ali’s aged jock dad) ensure that the laughs keep coming, even if “What Men Want” outstays its welcome.

(Did Paramount Hamstring “What Men Want” before the Box Office Race Started?)

MPAA Rating: R for language and sexual content throughout, and some drug material

Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Tracy Morgan, Josh Brener, Erykah Badu, Richard Roundtree, Wendi McClendon-Covey, Brian Bosworth

Credits: Directed by Adam Shankman, script by Tina Gordon, Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory. A Paramount Players/BET release.

Running time: 1:57

Oh hummus, you Dionysian dip delight, you magical combo of chickpeas, garlic, tahini, lemon juice, olive and salt.

Is there any meal that wouldn’t be improved by the Original App, a little delicious dab daubed on pita bread?

Is it no wonder the Greeks want to take credit for inventing you? Ah, but they have to take a NUMBER, don’t they? Pakistan and Lebanon, israel and Egypt and the entire Levant claim you as their own.

“Hummus! The Movie” doesn’t get to the bottom of that. It notes the Israelis “are now claiming that hummus is part of THEIR tradition. ‘An Israeli dish; blah blah blah,” as one skeptical Lebanese chef gripes. “NOT true. In Lebanon we “have been eating hummus for a few hundred years.

“OUR cuisine, our tradition, part of our society.”

Yeah, but what about the Greeks, Beirut Boy?

“Greek? PLEASE. We were baking bread for thousands of years while in Europe, they didn’t have any culture. They were eating each other.”

That’s just part of the lip service paid to that great debate in “Hummu!,” a whimsical to the point of playful film from Israeli filmmaker Oren Rosenfeld. Yes, he’s prejudiced, and most of the hummus houses he visits are in Israel and in the towns the Muslim majority there still call Palestine.

But when his assorted cooks, chefs, restaurateurs and others (a monk and a rabbi, for starters) weigh in, it’s all in good foodie fun. The name comes from the Arabic spelling of “chickpeas” which seems to settle that. Egypt seems to have the strongest claim for country of origin.

But “Hummus!” is more about how its emerged, from that region, as a universal appetizer, the dip found from Dieppe to Daytona, Chareloi to China.

Rosenfeld has fun with folks on the street — New York, Tel Aviv, etc. — describing hummus –“It’s s a mousse. Chickpeas and tahini…It comes from Greece, Israel, Spain, Pakistan, what have you.

Jalil Dabit in Ramle, a Christian Arab Palestinian is the third generation to run his family’s restaurant in Ramle, and dreams of taking his secret sauce to Berlin.

Yehoshua Soferthe Jamaican-born rabbi, martial artist and “Raggamuffin” (rap reggae) rapper), has the hippest take on the snack and the “conflict” over it.

It’s the “national food of the Middle East. The common denominator that makes all people here stupid is hummus!”

As he croons in the film’s title tune, “”It’s not about Huuuuuumus. It’s about life in the wild, wild Middle Eeeeeeasst.”

A French monk in Acre complains about the taking of turns cooking in his monastery (“Very DANGEROUS.”) and marvels at the Muslim village of Abu-Gosh he walks through which has 20 restaurants, each with its own distinct take on the food for which they’re famous.

But the most serious this conflict gets is the ongoing fight to see who can serve up the biggest plate of hummus. We meets a London-based Guiness Worlds Records adjudicator largest serving of hummus in human history.

“As long as the finished product includes chickpeas, lemon juice, tahini, salt garlic, olive oil we’re happy with that,” he says. Lebanon and Israel keep raising the kilogram throw-weight.

Whatever the history, the food is pitched here as the food of the future.

“Chickpeas,” one expert opines, “are SUPER food!”

A German gent marvels that “In Virginia, many farmers, they change their harvest from tobacco to chickpeas.”

From his mouth to the USDA’s ears.

Be sure to catch this with the subtitles. Unless you speak Arabic, Hebrew and “raggamuffin” jive.

MPAA Rating: Unrated

Cast: Suhela Alhindi ,Jalil Dabit, Ido Zarmi, Eliyahu Shmueli

Credits: Directed by Oren Rosenfeld, script by Oren Rosenfeld, Rebecca Shore and Baruch Goldberg. A Multicom Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:09