Movie Nation

The lifelong horrors of childhood abuse hide in plain sight in “Beneath the Leaves,” a more tricky-than-interesting thriller that might outsmart itself if it was any smarter to begin with.

It’s got kids who survive trauma and try to make something of their future, and kids who go on to repeat their trauma to a new generation. And what they’re all living with is memories of the worst things that can happen to children — torture, kidnapping, sexual abuse. So there’s something at stake here, at least.

A prologue shows us the worst of it, foster siblings growing up with a horrific stepfather who forces the nail-biting boy to endure brutal, bloody nail-trimming sessions, and a sad little girl who endures stepdad’s drunken attention after the boy has taken his punishment.

They escape their lot, but can they escape their fate?

Twenty years later, Whitley, a notorious child killer played by the cadaverous Doug Jones (he  wore the amphibian suit in “The Shape of Water”) escapes from prison with several other convicts. And he’s on his way back to the old gold mining town of Julian, California, to settle old scores.

The police captain (Paul Sorvino) puts his cops in the hunt. But despite the fact that several murderers were among those who got away, Detectives Shotwell (Mira Sorvino) and Larson (Kristoffer Polaha) are put on “domestic disturbance” duty.

Is it because they not-so-secretly sleep together? Is it because they both drink, Larson to excess? Nope. Larson was one of a handful of kids to escape Whitley’s clutches years before. He’s “too close to this case.”

As the escapees kill here and there, and are killed themselves, Shotwell and Larson get caught up in the action.

Whitley is still at large, but not being allowed to pursue him, they have time to hit the bars where Larson drinks til he drops and Shotwell picks her spot to share her past trauma — she’s ex-military — with her lover. Since nothing cools him down, she’s given a new partner — the squirrely bird lover Abrams (Aaron Farb), an obsessive with convenient knowledge of the area flora and fauna.

And then Whitley’s escaped prey from 20 years before start turning up dead, trapped, tortured and murdered.

There’s not much for the actors to play here, with the Oscar winning Sorvino having her weepy moment of remembrance and Poloha (“Atlas Shrugged”) tossing furniture around in drunken and sober tirades.

Farb makes his character comically quirky enough to underestimate. Abrams and Shotwell check out the register of a sleazy motel where one victim disappeared.

“Peter Piper?  That’s a pseudonym!”

“Ya think?”

The odd burst of violence doesn’t hide the sense that one and all are kind of sleepwalking through “Beneath the Leaves.” There’s a mystery to unravel, but no urgency in the actions of one and all. Only one of the fights has suspense and gets the viewer’s heart racing.

The novelty of pairing up the Oscar winner Mira Sorvino with her father, veteran character actor Paul Sorvino, wore off three collaborations ago.

Three screenwriters adapted a story by director Adam Marino (the Lou Ferrigno thriller “Ring Ring”), and they and he pay more attention to plot than dialogue or characters.

Some random scenes pay off. The opening, with children in  jeopardy, works better than anything that follows.

Some later scenes, with Polaha, Christopher Masterson of “Malcolm in the Middle” and Christopher Backus (married to Sorvino) giving us a hint of the living nightmare adult survivors of childhood abuse endure, pull the viewer in. Just a smidge.

Mostly though, “Beneath the Leaves” keeps us at arm’s length and the cast at half-speed, a disappointing combination when your aim was an intricate, raw-nerves thriller with visceral violence, surprises and characters we connect with enough to root for.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with graphic violence and sexual situations — some involving children — and profanity

Cast: Doug Jones, Mira Sorvino, Kristoffer Polaha, Paul Sorvino, Aaron Farb, Christopher Backus, Christopher Masterson

Credits: Directed by Adam Marino, script by Naman Barsoom, Daniel Wallner and Mark Andrew Wilson. A Reel Fire/Eagle Films release.

Running time: 1:30

In the larger scheme of things, the fact that a musical interrupted by tragedy came together for opening night isn’t the most important or telling story about the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

But if you watch one documentary about Parkland, Amy Schatz’s “Song of Parkland” might be the easiest to take.

The tragedy of Feb. 14, 2018, underscores every scene, every action.

The cell-phone videos recorded mid-evacuation, the TV news helicopter footage and montages of the news coverage of the massacre of 14 kids in a suburban high school isn’t pushed aside.

But the pluck and poise of the drama kids, more than a few of whom have become public spokespersons for a school that morphed into a national movement, is damned inspiring. The fierce, focused woman who is their teacher, coach and director, Melody Herzfeld — expects no less.

They were mid-rehearsal when Nikolas Cruz brought his AR-15 into school and opened fire. Herzeld, whom ALL her students call “Herzfeld,” didn’t let them dash into the hall on hearing the fire alarm go off.  One insists “that saved our lives.” She made them finish the number they were working on for their annual musical for little kids.

When the were in the middle of a school “CODE RED” became clear, she rounded up her charges — 65 students — and herded them into the secure “techie room” backstage.

“Text your parents…that you’re safe” she told them.

And when they heard the police break down the nearby doors to finally enter the school, she gave them another piece of “direction.” Cell-phones off, hands up.

“No dramatics. You’re not going to cry.”

And as cell phone video of their “rescue” plays out on the screen, she remembers what she told them as they were led to safety out on the school lawn.

“On the grass, I said ‘NOW we can cry.'”

As the news of the tragedy spread and the school became Ground Zero for #NeverAgain, the political movement that would take on the Russian-financed NRA and its Congressional backers, with a school surrounded by makeshift memorials made of posters, notes of support, flowers and stuffed animals from all over the country, shaking the shock was difficult, handling the turmoil and emotions more than most kids could handle.

“Our city is broken, and we don’t know when it’s gonna be fixed,” student Alex Wind says. But for kids like him, Herzfeld’s “Make your voice heard, tell your truth” edict was something they could cling to.

They poured their heartbreak and trauma into composing songs. And they went back to rehearsal.

“You always hear, ‘The show must go on,'” Wind remembers. “When we all came back to school, we knew what we needed to do.”

They’d get “Yo, Pirates!,” a musical adaptation of a children’s book, ready for opening night.

“We HAD to finish this to show ourselves and the community that we CAN do and keep moving on from something tragic that happened,” cast member Ashley Paseltiner says.

“We want to bring happiness to the school…to ‘shine a light,’ if you will,” Alex Atjanasiou declares, to gales of giggles from the rest of the cast at his cheeky drama nerd corniness.

If you wondered where those darned “Parkland Kids” got their confidence to speak up, debate foes and withstand the assaults of Fox News hosts and others, where their polish in organizing their thoughts, their courage to stand up and start a movement came from, “Song of Parkland” has your answers.

Schatz’s film doesn’t capture kids in weeping despair, but in the focus that comes with a renewed sense of purpose.

Drama kids, as anybody who ever was one can tell you, can be narcissistic and overly dramatic. But there’s little of that here. Schatz doesn’t let us confuse their efforts for any pursuit of the spotlight. They’re determined to put a different face on their school, and with that little musical, demonstrate resilience to their community.

Which they did, all the way to last year’s Tony Awards, when they stood on stage on national TV and sang “Seasons of Love” from “Rent.”

As I said, this isn’t the deepest or darkest or most complete look at Parkland you’ll ever see. But “Song of Parkland” is the most upbeat. Whatever hangs over them, whatever awful thing happened to them and their classmates, their plucky Keep Calm and Carry a Song is a sweet exclamation point to put on a year of tragedy, outrage, activism and action.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Credits: Directed by Amy Schatz. An HBO Film.

Running time: 29 minutes

Professional MMA fighter with biceps the size of Sequoias wakes up next to a dead woman, a “one night stand.”

He’s black. She’s white. No, it doesn’t look good. Not to the cops, not to his “alibi” girlfriend, not to the press.

Did I mention the woman was a reporter?

Major style points shout-out to “A Violent Man” for getting down and dirty in and out of the Octagon. It’s a fight picture with an aging but deserving fighter trying to make the most of his “big break,” a grizzled, loyal trainer and manager in his corner, a brute of an opponent, a slippery manager for that opponent and a nasty strip club scene — mandatory in such movies.

And it’s got a murder, post coital death by strangulation.

Director and co-writer Matthew Berkowitz has the makings of a solid vehicle for Thomas Q. Jones, the best running back ever to come out of Big Stone Gap, Va. But Berkowitz’s film has pacing problems exacerbated by rather clumsy handling of the film’s “whodunit” and thriller elements.

We can figure out what’s up the moment the crime is reported, even if the anti-heroic hero can’t even recall if he actually did it.

Ty (Jones) has taken up MMA later in life, and at 34 he’s still hoping to get something out of his magnificent build. A chance visit by Marco Rayne, the champ (UFC fighter and veteran big-screen heavy Chuck Liddell) and his manager (Bruce Davison) in search of a sparring partner has Ty and his trainer, the gym owner Pete (Isaach De Bankolé  of “Casino Royale,” “Night on Earth” and “Black Panther”) wondering where this could lead.

Maybe his girlfriend (Khalilah Joi) will get off his back about “our future” and his need to “get a REAL job.”

An impromptu bout gives them all their answer. Ty makes the Champ “tap out.” And it was caught on cell-phone video. Manager Ben Green (Davison, best known these days for his work in the “X-Men” movies) barely has time to put together a bribe and an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) before Ty can get the word out.

“I choked out the Champ!”

He takes the bribe and STILL meets with a reporter (Denise Richards) with a “thing” for fighters. She wants a demonstration of the choke hold. He’s not having it. Her promise to “keep your ass outta jail” has the ring of “famous last words.”

One position leads to another, and bingo — dead choking victim in bed, a guy who “choked out the Champ” is the only suspect.

“A Violent Man” stays interesting as the cagey, tricky trap-setting police investigation (Jon Sklaroff and Felisha Terrell play the cops) gets underway. We even follow the cops for a bit.

Then, they disappear. The urgency of the story flies out the window as the duplicitous Ty gets his dreamed-of title shot even as his world is supposedly crumbling around him. He’s got time to think of how he can make up with his girl, giving Pete his shot at managing a contender, all that. He should be afraid for his life.

The brawls, sex and interrogation scenes are well-handled. But if you don’t have the budget to stage a “title defense,” don’t show it. The fighting is passable, but the setting screams “We’re out of money.”

Jones had a role on the Marvel TV series “Luke Cage,” and has had bit parts in some movies. He’s got enough presence to graduate from “big threatening guy” roles and he shows us enough here to suggest he could go places.

Filmmaker Berkowitz? He might be worth watching, too. The dialogue works and the performances hold up. But with a background in editing, he’s still not showing us much command of story and pacing. Maybe next time, as this outing only achieves “close, but no title this time” status.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with graphic violence, explicit sex

Cast: Thomas Q. Jones, Chuck Liddell, Denise Richards, Bruce Davison

Credits: Directed by Matthew Berkowitz, script by Matthew Berkowitz and Justin Steele. A GVN release.

Running time: 1:47

That would be this one.

No, Mister Johnson, I am not a big fan of the Fast and Fatuous films.

But a promising, two-fisted buddy action comedy? I could see that. Especially with these three and Idris as the self-described “Bad Guy.”

There’s a half-joking cliche about a phrase directors over-use on the sets of big screen comedies.

“Again. But faster.”

Comedy is about timing, and speed and pacing are a big part of that. And no comedy about running, even if it’s about cross-country distance running and not sprints, can afford to be as slow-footed as “Varsity Punks.”

It’s about a jock who has relished being part of America’s Football Industrial Complex since childhood. Then, he’s injured in a high school prank and finds himself forced to abandon the safety of The Popular and the Pretty and take up with kids he’s teased since his tweens, discovering their humanity and his true worth in the process.

But as promising set-ups are misplayed or abandoned, as the comic leads search and search for their funny bones, with the script offering no help, these “Punks” seem gassed long before the finish line comes into sight.

Monte Valley is a typical American high school where life is all about football. The “misfits” who’re into sports? They wear their hair too long, sport a few too many tattoos and run cross country, “XC” as it’s called.

A prologue has shown us that A.J. (Cody Esquivel ) has been jerky jock since his tweens, picking on future XC runner Rosie (Andy Bueono) even then. But the handsome QB of the Monte Valley Vikings has never wavered in commitment to his athletic career.

He avoids risks off the field, until that fateful mid-season party where he’s reluctantly sent on a beer run. Peer pressure results in a “tense” grab and dash that gets him two cases, and a busted hand.

His foul-mouthed football-crazed coach (Orien Richman, the funniest guy in the movie) blows up and blows A.J. off. You’d expect no less from a guy who chews on his young charges with “Just because you can Google ‘concussion,’ you think you’re a DOCTOR now?”

A.J. needs to stay in shape, needs an outlet. So he jogs over to the “misfits” running cross country. Laid-back Coach Menlo, played by Efren Ramirez (Pedro of “Napoleon Dynamite”) lets the “jock” in, shrugging off his arrogance that he’s automatically in the starting seven on the XC team. His new teammates?

“He’s not one of us! He doesn’t DESERVE to run with us.”

“Varsity Punks” never loses track of the kids, but it does tend to lean on Ramirez to juice up the comedy quotient. And he just can’t get up to speed.

Coach Menlo gets so little respect from the football-crazed school that he loses his office space to the junior varsity — “Let me bend over, like the rest of the administration, and give you guys everything you want.”

Ramirez cannot make that line funny.

Reacting to the other coaches (veteran character actor Noel Gugliemi of “A Boy Called Sailboat”) bragging about their teaching gigs “Online MASTERS, boy!” just contrasts Ramirez from the snappier wits cast around him.

Writer-director Anthony Solorzano even gives Menlo a couple of secrets — he was a star cross country runner at Monte Valley as a high schooler, but today he’s got a gambling problem, a weakness for the ponies. You sense Solorzano realized the mistake in casting in the editing, as in one unexplained scene, the cash from a “fundraiser” for the team we haven’t noticed is then gambled away — with no follow up scene showing consequences for Coach Menlo.

Solorzano leaves money on the table, time and again, in the finished film. Lines are wasted in a scene where A.J. is warned that a tea they’re competing with “Runs dirty” — elbows, trips, etc. Solorzano doesn’t do the obvious with this — a footballer now running XC is NOT a guy you want to try elbowing in mid-race. Solorzano does NOTHING with that piece of painstakingly included dialogue.

And after putting “Punks” in the title, a little shaving creaming cars is all the “punkish” behavior we’re treated to. The little scamps!

Here’s what does work. Rosie’s short childhood make him an easily goaded older teen. He’s provoked into joining a backyard fight club bout.

“He’s not really a BOUNCER, right?

“Naah, that’s just his GANG name…But don’t worry. He left the gang when he was 12.”

The rejected-by-the-popular-kids journey A.J. makes — dumped by his dishy girlfriend  (“Cross Country, who DOES that?”), shamed by his punk teammate Ryan (J.J. Martinez) — may be a non-starter.

But the whiskey-soaked rural California parties, where the boys flirt and the girls twerk and Jesus (it’s a Halloween costume) is the bartender at the tub, taking every bottle “contributed” to the event to make “Jungle Punch,” have the ring of the real and are at least potentially funny.

Coach Menlo’s flirtation with the “hot math teacher” who runs marathons (Raquael Torres, lightly amusing)? Not so much.

The subject matter and El Monte, California locations conjure up unfortunate comparisons to the Kevin Costner-coaches Latino runners dramedy “McFarland, USA,” a far superior movie even if it did have the “Anglo Saving the Latinos” subtext to fight against.

There’s a lot to be said for “telling our own stories,” but “Punks” doesn’t even have that going for it. A mostly Latino cast and the writer-director gives the picture little flavor of the people or the place.

Making it “again, but faster” isn’t an option. But it might have helped. For a movie about running, this one never gets out of the blocks.

MPAA Rating: unrated, boxing violence, sexual situations, alcohol abuse and profanity — all involving teens.

Cast: Efren Ramirez, Andy Bueno, Cody Esquivel, Stphanie Almaraz, Raquael Torres, Noel Gugliemi

Credits: Written and directed by Anthony Solorzano. A Top 7 Productions release.

Running time: 1:40

The difference between “The Lego Movie” and “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” is the distance between “love” and “like.”

Because although it has a delightful DIY feel, more of “This is how kids with imagination PLAY with Legos,” to its framework — a Lego-crazed boy is forced by his parents to share the toys and play with his little sister — the story slapped together under that banner runs out of gas and good gags long before the blocks snap together to spell “The End.”

We see the smudges and finger-prints on the Lego Duplo (aimed at the littlest kids) blocks, which are weird, illogical creations from that a toddler or pre-schooler might gurgle up.

The best lines are voiced by such a tyke, a villain threatened with her big brother’s characters snapping together laser cannons to take her down.

“I EAT lazubs!”

Still, there’s a lot for (allegedly) adult fans to giggle at, as the kid (Jadon Sand) has gotten over his “Everything is Awesome” phase and moved into pre-fanboy “Everything’s NOT Awesome” and turned “darker, broodier, Bale-iest.”

His Lego “Bricksburg” has morphed into “Apocalypse Burg,” complete with ruins and the half-melted Statue of Liberty from “Planet of the Apes.”

It’s “a heckish place to live” for everybody but orange-vested construction worker Emmet (Chris Pratt), who keeps a song in his heart and a Lego picket-fenced house ready for two-fisted heroine WildStyle, aka Lucy (Elizabeth Banks).

But there’s a new threat, Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi and her empowered aide, General Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz), a new threat to “The World” as the kids playing with these toys see it.

Batman (Will Arnett) may be “off having a separate, stand-alone adventure” for much of the movie “and Marvel not taking our calls.” When he comes back he may have to MARRY the Queen if he can’t fend off General Mayhem’s assaults.

“EAT it and weep!  Keep eating and weeping!”

Emmet? He’s too naive and wimpy to be much help, prompting WildStyle and new arrival Rex Dangervest to try butching Emmet up before the Final Confrontation.

I loved the way we see Lego piece ID numbers floating around the parts used as the heroes assemble assorted Mad Max-style getaway vehicles, the cute Bruce Willis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg cameos and Will Arnett’s peerless way with a funny line.

“I carry my tortured past in my chiseled gluts.”

Haddish sings and has the occasional one-liner that lands.

“I’m just not INTO Gotham City guys!”

The world-ending calamity that this quest contrived by feuding siblings is meant to avoid? “OurMom-egeddon.”

The teachable moment message — Everything ISN’T awesome, but learn to persist (and it is implied, ‘Resist’) — is…fine.

The quest itself is a tad dull and repetitive, the one-liners dry up and the several new tunes fail to delight.

And as much as I’d love to say this one sticks in my head the way it’s musical show-stopper, “This Song’s Gonna Get Stuck Inside Your Head” is supposed to, it just doesn’t.

MPAA Rating: PG for some rude humor

Cast: Maya Rudolph, Will Ferrell and the voices of Elizabeth Banks, Chris Pratt, Will Arnett and Tiffany Haddish.

Credits: Directed by Mike Mitchell, script by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.  A Warner Animation release.

Running time: 1:45

She’s always been more than a supernaturally (or made in a computer — “Tron”) pretty face.

Here’s Olivia Wilde all foaming at the mouth fierce, an abused woman avenging other abused women?

“A Vigilante” gets a limited theatrical release and VOD on Direct TV on Feb. 28.

The Oslo bands were called Mayhem and Burzum.

And to say they got a little too INTO the whole dark/Goth/Death Metal ethos is an understatement.

Here’s an outline of the “true” story.

The film version of “Lords of Chaos?” It opens this in limited release Friday, wider over the course of the next two months.

The payoff comes midway through “Destroyer,” the big moment when all the street cred that Nicole Kidman has been building up with her worn, raw, nose-busted appearance in scene after scene.

She’s a deep undercover cop ready to storm into a bank that’s being robbed, taking out a gang she infiltrated and hellbent on taking down its charismatic leader (Toby Kebbell). Two cops emerge from a patrol car and take up positions.

“Let’s go,” Det. Erin Bell growls.

“You’re not gonna wait for BACKUP?”

“This is a f—–g GUNFIGHT!”

Director Karyn Kusama (“Girlfight”) stages a decent shootout, even if she is no Michael Mann, Walter Hill, Kathryn Bigelow or Antoine Fuqua. But what she was going for here was a violent tone poem sketched in shades of addiction, guilt, grief, revenge and responsibility. The screenwriters and the director herself, with her addiction to closeups of her star, get in their own way and keep that tone poem from coming off.

The screenplay takes us back and forth in time, to events eighteen years before, when Erin was a young cop who had fallen in love with the partner (Sebastian Stan) who was with her as they crossed ethical lines to cozy up to Silas and his murderous gang.

Something went sideways. People died. Loot was stashed. And now, all these years later, with a daughter she’s barely raised (Jade Pettyjohn) who is making her first Big Mistake about a man, and colleagues who give her too long a leash mainly because they don’t want to be around her, Erin is strung-out, drunk a lot of the time and looking for one last chance at redemption.

“If you come back , I’ll kill you. It’ll be easy. Because I don’t care what happens to me.”

But whatever Kusama was going for, in delivering her Oscar winning star, one of the great pale screen beauties of our time, in splotchy, mottled brown-toothed closeups, she all but ensured all anybody would talk about here is Kidman’s “transformation,” her “courage” in playing somebody with Erin’s hard highway miles showing in every wrinkle, every dingy gray hair, every freckle or age spot (look at her hands) the camera captures.

Flipping back and forth in time, we can see the young undercover cop and the digital kiss of youth Kidman wears in her scenes with her partner — conspiring, planning, reacting to the violence that they’re unable to prevent, “getting their stories straight” to cover up what they knew and when they knew it.

Kusama’s film has hints of the Jason Patric/Jennifer Jason Leigh-Lili Fini Zanuck drug thriller “Rush” in it, of William Friedkin’s cops making too many compromises, endangering too many innocents to catch the villain in “To Live and Die in LA.” .

But the Phil Hay/Matt Manfredi script is so caught up in trickiness — confusing time shifts, long, bland whispered stretches between the action beats — that “Destroyer” fritters away any chance it has at suspense, any forward motion the narrative might have achieved.

Erin is hunting a “Destroyer,” and its obvious she has become one herself — pitiless, beyond the law. Her capture of a female bank robber — played by Tatiana Maslany — with whom she has history has the film’s roughest violence and grittiest moments. And yet Erin is not utterly blind to the damage she’s passed on to others, even her daughter.

Focusing so narrowly on her lead character allows Kusuma to get this point across. But zeroing in on the transformation her leading lady makes becomes a distraction.

And when all anybody is talking about is how rough Kidman “looks” in the movie, it’s no wonder audiences have ignored it, and no great surprise that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences “snubbed” her and it. It’s a star vehicle, awards bait and a showcase thriller that barely holds your interest as you wait through the whispers and “She looks TERRIBLE” closeups for something exciting or moving to happen.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, violence, some sexual content and brief drug use

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Toby Kebbell, Sebastian Stan, Tatiana Maslany, Scoot McNairy, Toby Huss, Bradley Whitford and Jade Pettyjohn

Credits: Directed by Karyn Kusama, script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. An Annapurna release.

Running time: 2:01

The re-adjustment to life after combat is rarely an easy one. Whatever else the end of the daily peril many face brings with it can be accompanied by a loss of excitement and sense of purpose, a craving for camaraderie.

At the end of World War II, some bored, under-employed or disaffected veterans coming home to the United States formed the first motorcycle gangs. They’d use the abbreviation “MC” or “MCC” to separate themselves from more mainstream clubs, put their imprint on their attire, as “leathers” became leather vests covered in patches and embroidered gang names, places they’d been or served.

“Among Wolves” is about copycat behavior in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Veterans of the long and bloody 1990s war with Serbia and Croatia were young men who fought against the invasion and “ethnic cleansing” of their countries. When the war ended, some of them formed a club.

When we meet “Moto Club Vulkovi” — The Wolves Motorcycle Club — they’re engaging in behavior straight out of “The Wild One,” or at least its real-life versions — the Sturgis Rally or Bike Week at Daytona Beach. Bikers, many of them older, some obese, ride around in black sleeveless T-shirts, leather vests covered in patches, drinking and partying, entertained by strippers at their encampment.

“This town, Livno, lives for the Wolves Moto Club,” one member chortles as his mates cut up on bikes and belly up to the bar.

But as the rally goes on, the core group is lectured by their leader, Lija, about their behavior.

“Kepa,” he says (in Bosnian, with English subtitles). “You ride on one wheel more often than you ride on two.” Enough with the “trouble making,” he barks. “Cut out that crap.”

As Lija was the leader of a group of paramilitaries who successfully defended the town, the bikers, young and old, listen to him.

And as “Among Wolves” unfolds, with scenic rides through rolling hills and towns still bearing the scars of war, we start to see this “moto club” as a biker gang of a different color, mostly made up of veterans who don’t relish telling war stories.

They visit a spot and point to where the minefields used to be, blast out the music of their combat youth and visit a display of aircraft, tanks and armored personnel carriers — “Drove this in Kraljevo in ’91.”

And when they stop manhandling the museum’s wares, they head back to what used to be the front lines, the higher hills where a herd of wild horses still roam.

They all pitch in on blood drives, a few bikers help out at an orphanage, and others help deliver medical supplies to another town across the border in a town in Croatia, the land of their former enemies.

But protecting their horses is their mission and passion.

As Braco drives his battered Range Rover into the hills to check on the 350 or so wild stallions, he points to a far mountainside and notes “I bombarded that place over there — 110s (millimeter shells) — chased them back into the woods.”

And then he and others tell the story of the horses of Borovo Clava, wild and free and there long before the war, barely surviving the combat, the minefields, the hard times that had locals killing them for food in “the anarchy” that came after combat ended and international journalists left and moved on to the next conflict zone.

They prefer to be “away from people who aren’t veterans,” Lija confesses, “away from people in general” at times. They may pull out their guns — pistols and an AK-47 — for a little let-off-steam shooting. But people who have seen real conflict don’t need to play soldier or fetishize guns.

“This ammo’s no good,” one laughs and grouses. You wonder if this scene was just staged for filmmaker Shawn Convey. The guys seem pretty disinterested in firearms. And these family men — doting dads, working class Joes — in scary biker gear don’t really have the time.

Several take up positions by a not-terribly-busy country road, slowing or stopping drivers, taking care to let the herd move from one side of the road to another.

“Don’t scare them. Don’t scare them. Let them come.”

The herd is small enough that they recognize the different generations, predict behavior and see an analogy to their own lives — wounded, scarred, needing help to survive.

“What else should we be doing if not charity work?” Lija asks,  question that can sound like a challenge to other such clubs and gangs in other countries — especially this one.

The film played the festival circuit where it picked up awards, here and there, and earns a theatrical and video on demand release Feb. 12.

There are things about the gently-uplifting slice-of-life that “Among Wolves” is that work against the film. We hear names, but nobody is really identified. Lija’s role in the war, his former position of leadership which corresponds to his current one, I had to look up elsewhere.

All this information should be on the screen, leading the viewer through the film and deepening our connection with the characters.

But “Among Wolves” is still a documentary of gentle surprises, reflection and tenderness, depicting a troubled part of the world’s truly original take on the concept of what a “biker gang” could be.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Credits: Directed by Shawn Convey, script by Kevin Ripp. An MVD Entertainment Group release

Running time: 1:29