Movie Nation

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

John Weld was a journalist, screenwriter, novelist and Ford dealership owner whose life is lightly skimmed over in “The Remarkable Life of John Weld,” a documentary based almost entirely on recreations of all the famous people he met, befriended, loved and cuckolded.

It’s a picaresque “Pilgrim’s Progress” of a biography that passes Weld off as a sort of writing equivalent of Forrest Gump or Woody Allen’s “Zelig.”

Weld was an Alabama boy who hied it to Hollywood at the peak of the silent film era, relying on his general fearlessness to tackle a job as a stunt man for the likes of Chaplin, Barrymore and cowboy star Tom Mix.

He was pals with Clark Gable, chased Walter Huston’s fiance and then became Huston’s lifelong friend and eventually came back as a screenwriter and novelist whose works Hollywood optioned. No films ever came from his writings there — not that made it to the Internet Movie Database, in any event.

A meeting at a party with gossip reporter Louella Parsons landed him a start in newspapering, learning the trade and writing in New York, chasing Lindbergh to Paris where he interviewed then-Governor Franklin Roosevelt and befriended the writer James Joyce. He eventually founded a small (rich) town newspaper in Laguna Beach.

The famed aviatrix Pancho Barnes was a drinking buddy. You might remember her as a “character” in “The Right Stuff.”

He wasn’t so much a colorful character and somebody who knew colorful characters. None of his books are touchstone titles — a Donner Party novel, “Don’t You Cry for Me” that was a 1940 best seller, and his “Memoirs of a Hollywood Stunt Man” captures the danger and DIY nature of early film stunt work.

He and his last wife filmed travelogues, but again, no record of them shows that they turned up in theaters or on TV.

And while the esteemed actor and go-to PBS narrator Peter Coyote narrates the recreations as Weld, reading from his memoirs, the experts interviewed here include a godson, a stunt coordinator, a couple of nieces, a film historian and Laguna Beach historian and an “Entertainment Life Coach.” Not exactly an assemblage that would past “American Masters” or “The American Experience” muster on PBS.

The relatives and fans interviewed here refer to Weld as “a man of honor,” even though he took up with other men’s wives and his Wikipedia entry leaves out half his marriages.

Director Gabe Torres samples a couple of Weld’s more difficult early Hollywood stunts — cliff diving, plunging in a raging river doubling for starlet Zasu Pitts — but neither of them deign to identify the movies.

And by the time we get to the resolution of the mystery that frames this life story — a ship sinking, with Weld and wife number four aboard it — in Yokohama Harbor in 1961 — the viewer can be excused for noting “Well, yes, this was a colorful enough life. But remarkable?”

The larger point here might be that this is an example of the sort of life lived when The Lost Generation was in Paris, when Hollywood was still new, when the world was smaller and people who made connections and got a foothold in publishing or New York newspapers or cinema could move relatively easily between those worlds.

As Coyote narrates Weld’s near-drowning “I wanted to take with me as many memories and images as I could conjure,” you can bet Weld wasn’t mentioning, in that memory, the bulk of his life — writing press releases for Boeing and Ford, owning a couple of small California Ford dealerships.

The viewer? It’s not just envy of a comfortable life well-lived that could make you blurt out, “Yes, and?”

MPAA Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Nic Tag, Claire Adams, Emily Kincaid, narrated by Peter Coyote

Credits: Directed by Gabe Torres, script by Rob Lihani.  A Multicom Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:16

Director Zhangke Jia gave us “Still Life” and “A Touch of Sin,” but earlier he expressed a fondness for gangster tales.

Nothing in this trailer — she meets him on the dance floor, he drops his gun, revealing his hidden life — surprises save for the setting. Quite striking.

Look for “Ash is Purest White” in limited release March 15.

There’s a “don’t overthink this” watchability to “Miss Bala,” the Hollywood remake of a lean-mean Mexican gangster movie about a beauty queen coerced into doing a drug lord’s murderous bidding.

Don’t give too much thought to the rapid transition the heroine makes from shocked and scared to death to confident enough to tamp down the fear and play both sides of the drug dealers/DEA front lines.

No head shaking at the obvious “heat” the good looking but cold-blooded kingpin is supposed to generate with the kidnapped and traumatized American woman.

And let’s not wallow in the moral ambiguity of a picture that paints the callous corruption of drug dealers, Mexican police and the Drug Enforcement Administration agents as equal on almost all counts.

Because we have to believe that to buy into any of this heroine’s journey from naif to nasty enough to hold her own among monsters.

Catherine “Twilight” Hardwicke’s film, hewing closely to the somewhat sharper 2011 Spanish language  B-movie “La Bala,” shows us “the other Tijuana,” a border city with cool buildings, money, swank clubs and people who’d sponsor a beauty pageant. That’s before she delivers the Tijuana generations of drug-trade thrillers have planted in the mind — corrupt, lawless, violent with poor people trapped in the crossfire.

That’s the Tijuana Gloria (Gina Rodriguez) lived in as a girl, which she’s reluctant to return to as an adult. She’s a makeup artist who works in the fashion industry, and she’s come to town to help childhood pal Suzu (Cristina Rodlo) win the Miss Baja California Pageant.

Gloria herself isn’t to be confused with a pageant contestant, as other characters give her the “Ugly Betty” treatment. That’s “foreshadowing” for you.

When they don their disco togs and hit a club, all is swinging and fun until Gloria visits the bathroom. That’s where she sees the Estrellas (star) gang break in and gear up. They’re here to assassinate the police chief.

Their handsome leader (Ismael Cruz Cordova) gives her the chance to escape, but tracking down Suzu slows her down and they’re both trapped when the shooting starts.

Gloria gets out. Where’s Suzu? She tracks down a cop afterwards seeking answers. Mentioning “I saw the men who did this” to the cop turns out to be a mistake. She’s turned over to the gang, asked “Do you want to stay alive?” and given a choice — “Do this one thing for us” and Lino the leader will help her find Suzu.

That “one thing” turns out to be parking a car bomb in front of a DEA “safe house.” Which creates problems when Gloria escapes and runs to safety to the first American accent she hears (Matt Lauria). That leads to her second “unless you help us” threat.

Gloria is trapped, forced to be Lino’s “mule” and forced to be Agent Reich’s (!?) “mole.”

As Gloria, plucky Rodriguez of TV’s “Jane the Virgin” brings a nuanced and underplayed sense of a young woman barely keeping it all together faced with horrific life-and-death choices, one right after another. We get moments of quivering, moist-eyed terror and rage, but Rodriguez made the choice to go with “poker faced,” and sticks with it. She never lets Gloria make the leap to “compelling.”

That gets in the way of Lino’s real-or-feigned attraction for her. It’s not an appearance thing. She’s just not that interesting. Why add her to the gang’s harem of enslaved women? Only the threat against Suzu’s little brother, that they’ll “gut that boy like a chicken,” keeps Gloria on task with them.

The DEA’s threats, lawless, lawyerless and outside of their jurisdiction, are just ridiculous enough to work — in B-movie logic.

Hardwicke gives us a trio of competent if not stylish shootouts, teases us with hints of what COULD happen to Gloria at every turn and brings in a US supplier (Anthony Mackie) to add another tipping point to Gloria’s tightrope walk.

“Tell Lino there’s a ‘mole’ in his operation!”

Lino’s too busy explaining his “I’m just playing THEIR game” villainy, feeding Gloria Mexican barbecue and always getting interrupted just as it seems as if he’s about to make a movie on Miss Poker Face.

“Miss Bala” — the title translates to “bullet,” as in “La Bala settles EVERYthing” — may be slicker than the Mexican film it’s based on, and for all its alleged complexity, it’s the B-movie conventions (tempting villain, a suspicious top lieutenant to the mobster who doesn’t trust Gloria, etc.) that hold it together.

Hardwicke loses track of those building blocks of the Bs at her own, and her movie’s peril. And she does. Characters disappear for long stretches, plotlines are abandoned and the finale we all see coming feels like a pulled punch.

A movie this illogical shouldn’t get hung up on whether Gloria is turned on by the bad guy giving her the eye. And a genre pic this conventional shouldn’t shy away from those conventions, when they’re the time-proven elements that work.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of gun violence, sexual and drug content, thematic material, and language

Cast: Gina Rodriguez, Anthony Mackie, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Cristina Rodlo

Credits: Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer. A Sony/Columbia Pictures release.

Running time: 1:44