Movie Nation

That damned “Avengers: Infinity War” swallowed the last vestige of box office innocence with its record-breaking $258 million opening last weekend.

It’s earned $340-350 million in the U.S. alone. In a week!

Surely this cannot continue. Unsustainable. All that. I mean, “Black Panther” was a phenomenon, hanging onto audience for months as it marches toward $700 million, domestic.

So expect “Infinity War” to have a fall-off closer to the latest “Star Wars” movies, whose records it vanquished. A 50% drop is guaranteed, 60% more reasonable and if it’s not getting repeat business, expect even more of a plunge.

Box Office Mojo is figuring a 44% fall-off is a safe bet — $116 million or so. Use that as your benchmark. If it earns less than that, it’s starting to wane as Marvel fans brace for “Deadpool 2.”

Box Office Guru figures a slightly steeper drop, down to “only” $108 million.  I’m guessing that’s closer to the mark, low $100s.

Curious to see how Eugenio Derbez’s remake of “Overboard” makes out with his Latino audience here in the U.S. The movie’s dull, he has zero chemistry with Anna Faris and yet he’s popular enough to promise a $15 million or so opening weekend, prognosticators tell us.

“Tully” has another wave of enthusiastic Jason Reitman/Diablo Cody/Charlize Theron reviews, and should stick around for a few weeks. Not from me, but SOME folks are crazy for it. It won’t open big — $5 million would prompt champagne cork-popping at Focus Features. Theron isn’t big box office, and she’s not at home in comedy. I’m guessing $4, tops.

The badly-acted serial killer thriller “Bad Samaritan” is opening on more screens, and David Tennant has his fans. If everybody’s seen “Quiet Place” and “Truth or Dare” it could manage $5.

I must confess to being mostly immune to the charms of “Tully,” basically “Nanny McPhee” as filtered through the foul-mouthed whimsy of Diablo Cody.

Screenwriter Cody re-teams with her “Juno” and “Young Adult” director, Jason Reitman and they both take another shot at making Charlize Theron warm and funny (“Young Adult” ) with this somewhat upbeat wish fulfillment fantasy about an overwhelmed mother who gets help from an always-beaming, upbeat and nurturing helper in the guise of a hippy chick “Night Nanny.”

So as I said, “Nanny McPhee” with F-bombs.

But as the picture celebrates the horrors pregnancy and child-rearing visit upon the female body, and Cody muzzles her usual style under a script that lets Reitman just show us the trials of motherhood instead of having it explained to us in Cody’s trademark saucy, sarcastic banter, you go with it. Sometimes, anyway, even if you suspect Reitman is covering for a script that doesn’t pop the way “Juno” did.

Theron is Marlo, who’s just taken her third maternity leave and is so overwhelmed with the two kids she and Drew (Ron Livingston) already have that “What were they THINKING?” is never far from anybody’s mind, onscreen or off.

They have a school-age daughter who is already somewhat neglected, because their son (Asher Miles Fallica) is more than a handful for them, and for the posh private school they’re sending their children to.

The kindergartener melts down in a flash, flips out if Mom so much as drops him off in a different parking lot and utterly freaks at loud noises.

All this affluence around them and supposedly expert teaching staff, and nobody uses the phrase “on the spectrum?” Everybody calls him “quirky,” but we know better.

The house is a wreck, meals are frozen, and Marlo wears her disappointment with this life and her struggle on her face, her shoulders and eyes.

“Such a blessing,” she says of the pregnancy, not meaning a word of it. Tell her she’s glowing — it’s the law, after all — and she might just go off.

“Really? I feel like an abandoned trash barge.”

But Marlo’s well-off brother (Mark Duplass) and his aspirational wife (Elaine Tran) have this great idea for a baby gift — a night nanny, “a bougie thing only rich a——s do.” People like them, in other words. The night nanny comes in and tends to the baby overnight, letting the parents get the sleep that keeps parenthood from shortening your life.

After a lot of resistance, Marlo agrees. And when the younger version of herself — tall, blonde Mackenzie Davis of “The Martian” — shows up, it’s as if Mary Poppins has stepped off the screen and come to make Marlo’s world right.

“I’m here to take care of you,” she says, always beaming. And damned if she doesn’t.

“Tully” cleans as she coos and clucks to the infant, sharing little pearls of wisdom in a steady torrent of grad-student trivia.

“I’m like Saudi Arabia. I have an energy surplus!”

The transformation in Marlo is immediate. She smiles, she gets a handle on things, the discouragement in her eyes fades. A little.

Because Tully is not just her helper and caregiver, she’s her doting confessor. Here’s someone you can tell, “If I had a dream that didn’t come true, I could at least be pissed at the world.”

This isn’t Cody’s most witty script, and the Oscar-winning Theron isn’t the most gifted at delivering these warmed-over one-liners.

“You’re like a book of ‘Fun Facts for Unpopular Fourth Graders.'”

Theron is better at the meltdowns and righteous tirades Marlo has when confronted with a world that isn’t as accommodating and sympathetic of the plights of motherhood as it should be.

And that stance, by the way, explains this picture’s mostly-adoring “Hug your mom” reviews. It’s got a righteous motherhood subtext that trumps, to some, its generally dull and predictable story arc. That, and Theron’s usual commitment to dressing down, ALL the way down, for a part.

Ignore one “Knocked Up” sequence, try not to notice how much of what we see is handled in cute montages, smile at the sensitive pop tunes (a cover of the Bond theme “You Only Live Twice” is key), try to recall one exchange as funny as this one between the affluent brother and his sister.

“We’d stay, but Emily (their kid) has a talent show.”

“Oh, what’s her talent?”

“Pilates.”

An hour in, the picture stops in its tracks and gives away The Big Reveal, where it’s taking us, in a jarringly abrupt moment only ex-stripper Cody or some NON-mom in the Hollywood Bubble (Reitman?) could find “normal” and believable.

That’s when I checked out of “Tully.” You don’t grade a motherhood dramedy on the curve just because Mother’s Day is coming. Even if it’s “Nanny McPhee” with F-bombs.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexuality/nudity

Cast: Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Ron Livingston, Mark Duplass, Elaine Tan, Gameela Wright, Asher Miles Fallica

Credits:Directed by Jason Reitman, script by Diablo Cody. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:36

New-to-the-business Electric Entertainment Studios wisely chose to center all the advertising and hype for their serial killer thriller “Bad Samaritan” around the villain. David Tennant is the most popular “Doctor Who” of recent vintage, a regular of British TV and sometimes stand-out supporting player in Hollywood films.

And he’s the whole damn movie here, all lip-smacking, bug-eyed bad guy surrounded  by REALLY bad supporting actors. No kidding, if ever you see a doomed woman, held hostage by a “Silence of the Lambs” type act this unconcerned, or her rescuer show this little panic, and the cops he tells about the “Fifty Shades” of bondage, torture and murder chamber he’s seen demonstrate this little urgency, feel free to ask for your money back.

It’s a thriller directed by veteran producer Dean Devlin (“Independence Day”), and lacking all the cash and bloat his productions usually boast, he’s at a loss as to what to do with actors.

Fortunately, he has Tennant, diving into the birdlike obsessive paranoia of Cale Ehrendreich, a Maseriti-driving Portland prick who can’t help but be rude to the underlings. That turns him into a “victim,” robbed in the old valet parking scam. You know, they take your car, use your GPS to find your house and the car’s garage opener to sneak into it while they know you’re out for dinner.

The masters of this caper are Derek (Carlito Olivero) and Irish immigrant Sean (Robert Sheehan of “Geostorm”). Derek is the punk with moxie, Sean the soulful thief out to make that big score.

But ducking into Mr. Maserati’s house delivers a lot more than just a stolen credit card. He sees a massive lock, which he opens into an “office” with walls lined with black plastic and a beaten, lashed woman (Kerry Condon) strapped into a vast muzzling harness.

A further poke around reveals a butcher room where the bodies can be chopped up for disposal. What to do, what to do?

Can’t call the cops because you’ll incriminate yourself and Derek, can’t break her out without the monster’s keys, and any second now he’s going to want his Maserati back.

Devlin packs the picture with filler, shots that don’t advance the story, and barely manages to maintain forward momentum. He fails utterly to hold our interest via anything other than anticipation of the next time Tennant gets right up in the camera, bug-eyed, and insists on the “correction” of anyone who fails to heed his character’s perverse discipline.

“I’m just a GUY,” he insists, in a dandy American psycho accent. He most certainly isn’t.

Sheehan sweats when he’s supposed to, but surely the victim has some idea of what’s in store, enough to make her “What do you want with me?” not sound like an incompetent audition for the part of would-be kidnapping and torture victim. Neither of them brings the urgency and desperation necessary to rope us into the movie, into their predicament with them.

A parallel story about the FBI’s investigation of disappearances in the region is flatly played as well.

New studios experience steep learning curves. Some figure things out quickly (See A24). Others get taken for a Hollywood hustle (CBS Films, et al).

Great villains make good thrillers, Hitchcock said. But he had the good sense to cast empathetic and talented movie stars as his heroes and heroines, too.

Electric Entertainment had better up the acting wattage if they want to play with the big boys. “Doctor Who” as a serial killer is never going to be enough.

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

Cast: Robert Sheehan, David Tennant, Kerry Condon, Carlito Olivero

Credits:Directed by Dean Devlin, script by Brandon Boyce . An Electric Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:51

About ready to toss in la toalla on the North-of-the-Border experiment with Mexico’s likable comic Eugenio Derbez.

The sweet-nature of his learn-to-be-a-dad farce “Instructions Not Included” are a distant memory, and “How to Be a Latin Lover” had more opportunities for laughs than actual giggles.

The deathly remake of “Overboard” pretty much seals the deal. An interminable amnesiac rich-guy-put-to-work romp that relies on Anna Faris to be his straight man, there’s barely a laugh in it, the only chuckles brought on when he loses his shirt for a couple of scenes where he vamps up his Jetskiing playboy alter ego.

Yeah, topless, he’s a riot.

He’s gone from being Mexico’s Rowan Atkinson or Eddie Murphy to Mexico’s Adam Sandler, or a version of a Sandler flunky, David Spade — as in more funny-looking than funny. And he’s the last one to realize it.

It’s a new version of of the old Goldie Hawn/Kurt Russell screwball comedy about the rich person who falls off a yacht, gets amnesia and is “claimed” by the only poor slop to know how rich they actually are. They remade that kidnapping and holding the insufferable rich a labor hostage the only way they could in this #MeToo era — by swapping the genders of the protagonists.

Derbez is playboy Leonardo, an heir burning through the bucks on his motor yacht, “Birthday Present,” and abusing the onboard help (John Hannah is his major domo) as he does.

Among those he treats badly is steam-cleaner Kate (Faris), a widow with three daughters, two jobs and a need to pass her nursing exam so that she can give them all a better life.

When Leonardo has his accident, her pal (Eva Longoria) talks her into faking photos, faking documents and taking possession of her “husband” at the hospital — not for his money, because he doesn’t remember he’s rich, but for light housework, cooking and day labor in construction. Revenge comes in him putting in the first “honest day’s work” in his life.

Make “Leo” sleep in the garage, because he broke his AA promise. Don’t know if he’s a “pervert,” but we’ve had hints.

“Mommy, what’s a pervert?”

“It’s nothing honey.”

“Then can I have one?”

The way this must, by law, play out is that “Leo” must make himself useful, discover the true joys of life are family and hard work and being reliable, and learn how to cook and bond with the working class, making himself worthy of a woman like Kate.

There’s little novel in this set-up (Leo’s doctor references the first “Overboard.”), aside from the fact that nobody this rich and probably infamous could be anonymous in the Internet age, so the entire concept here is a big old bust.

The parallel story, with Leonardo’s scheming sister (Mariana Trevino), the one that “does all the work” at the company,  plotting to fake his death (raiding a campfire pit for ashes for Leo’s urn) has no spark to it, either.

And the colorful work crew Leo joins isn’t colorful enough.

Derbez has an audience on both sides of the border, and one cannot blame a guy for trying to reach out for new fans. But two hours of limp jokes in Spanish and non-existent ones in English should cow him into playing to his strengths, or at least improving his American representation. Otherwise, Hollywood will continue fobbing disposable ideas off on him, like some rube fresh off the boat, plane or bus.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for suggestive material, partial nudity and some language.

Cast: Eugenio Derbez, Anna Faris, Eva Longoria, John Hannah

Credits:Directed by Rob Greenberg, script by Bob Fisher, Rob Greenberg. An MGM/Pantelion release.

Running time: 1:52

Yes, she’s become a meme, idolized by generations of young American women, imitated to hilarious hip hop effect by “Saturday Night Live’s” Kate McKinnon, “Notorious RBG.”

But the movie “RBG”  just glances at that. But Betty West and Julie Cohen’s documentary gets at the accomplishments that made Ruth Bader Ginsburg deserving of her place on the U.S. Supreme Court, and celebrated for growing place within American culture.

“Celebrated” — that’s the only word for it. It’s a Ginsburg portrait, largely in her own words and almost exclusively those of her fans — her children, college classmates, peers, media figures, old friends, politicians.

She is a shy, quiet opera lover, a “horrible cook,” widow of a much more gregarious (and funny) lawyer-husband, a woman who almost from birth it was said, “She didn’t do small talk. She didn’t go girl chat. A deep thinker,” two old pals declare.

And she and is a boundary breaking legal mind for the ages. College in the Cornell of the 1950s — “Cornell was a preferred school for daughters…They kind of suppressed how smart they were,” facing sexism in Harvard Law School, already a mother, with a husband sick with cancer, and yet she still made The Law Review. Following her husband after he graduated and landed a New York law firm gig, she went to Columbia, getting a law degree that made her almost unemployable in New York.

It was as a Rutgers professor teaching 1960s “Gender and the Law” courses, getting involved with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. She took as her example, Thurgood Marshall’s approach to finding cases that could change Civil Rights law.

An Air Force woman here — “Nice girls didn’t file lawsuits,” former Air Force officer Sharron Frontiero cracks — another discriminatory law challenged there, and Ginsburg had her start — building the cases that moved America toward equal rights for women.

We hear the audio recording of her first argument before the Supreme Court.

“I ask no favor for my sex,” she quoted (and still quotes) 19th century Abolitionist Sarah Grimke, “all I ask of our brethren is that they take their boot our necks”

“She captured, for the (Supreme) Court, what being a second class citizen was like,” a colleague remembers.

Through a canny collection of cases — some wins, some losses, some focusing on gender discrimination against women, and in one memorable case, arguing for equal “mother’s benefits” for the surviving parent, the father, from Social Security.

“It was like knitting a sweater,” one contemporary says of her methodical case-law approach. All of this led to the day when President Bill Clinton cast out his notion of putting New York Governor Mario Cuomo on the Supreme Court in 1993.

The film uses home movies, testimony from Ginsburg’s confirmation hearings and interviews to build its portrait of RBG.

Senator Orrin Hatch reflects on how much disagrees with her now, and disagreed with positions then, and echoes the admiration he expressed way back then.

We also get a sampling of her highest profile opinions, beginning with the gender discrimination case against the State of Virginia and the state-supported all-male military school, The Virginia Military Institute.

Her children, James and Jane Ginsburg, humanize Ginsburg.

And NPR’s Supreme Court reporter, Nina Totenberg, Ginsburg’s biggest cheerleader, weighs in frequently about how her court persona and the meme version of RBG — underscored by Dessa performing her feminist rap, “The Bullpen” — is in contrast with the shy woman Ginsburg is in person.

Hearing her take apart, representing Virginia, future Solicitor General Ted Olson (on tape) is humbling. Seeing her triumphant return to the school decades later might move you to tears.

Her dissenting greatest hits, most famously in the twisted “logic” of the 2000 presidential election decision, are recounted. They have become more frequent and more biting as a very conservative Court dials back the clock on voting rights and the like in the past 20 years.

Catching the first time she sees SNL’s McKinnon’s hilarious riff on her persona is worth the price of admission. Sober RBG cackles the way the rest of us did the first time we caught “a Third Degree GinsBURN.”

“RBG” has the sort of decorum largely vanished from American politics and American life these days. Even the few foes who show up on camera are polite, gracious (in defeat, in Olson’s case) and right on the edge of admiration. Even her polar opposite, Justice Antonin Scalia, vacationed with her and made jovial joint public appearances that never got heated, despite the paper cuts of deathly-serious repartee.

It’s that tone that makes “RBG” worth seeing in theaters, the shock value of seeing people agreeably disagree . No, there are NOT enough dissenting voices in the film, she’s that popular.

But it’s jarring to see the turn the film, and the country take, away from civility, a steady march toward equal rights and the profane, law-flouting death-to-mine-enemies, progress-torching culture we’re moved into.

MPAA Rating: PG for some thematic elements and language

Cast: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gloria Steinem, Nina Totenberg, Orrin Hatch

Credits:Directed by Betty West and Julie Cohen. A Magnolia/CNN Films release.

Running time: 1:38

This is one of the great unfilmed “true” stories of World War II, that of the multi-lingual, quiz-show dazzling baseball catcher and coach  Moe Berg’s work as an OSS spy.

An all-star cast, headed by Paul Rudd but including Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels and Paul Giamatti, tells the story of Berg’s recruitment, training and espionage work to keep the Germans from developing the A-bomb.

“The Catcher Was a Spy” pens June 22.

If there was ever any doubt, “gaydar” works in the countryside, too.

That’s not much consolation to Johnny Saxby, the bored, drunken heir to the family farm in the fine British melodrama, “God’s Own Country.”

Johnny (Josh O’Connor) a compassionate but unhappy farm “lad” who drinks too much and isn’t shy about getting his hands dirty and helping a heffer have her calf. Not that his tough-talking, barely-walking Dad (Ian Hart) would notice.

“Go easy on the sauce,” is ignored. The son vomits his way through every morning and bickers his way through every chat with his dad and grousing grandmother (Gemma Jones).

Johnny’s a sullen loner who brushes off  his ex, Robyn (Patsy Ferran), who went off to her “posh college” but seems to know and sympathize with his secret. Rough and abrupt encounters in the feed stalls at the cattle auction are his speed. No talking.

“Want to get a pint, or somethin’?”

“No.”

The Saxbys need a farmhand to help out, and the Romanian Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) was “the only bugger to apply.”

“Gypsy?”

“Please don’t call me that.”

It’s a small, struggling farm, chickens, some sheep, “just a few beef cattle.” Gheorghe is handy with a sheep calving.

But as those cowboys showed us, way back on “Brokeback Mountain,” the lonesome range — even in Yorkshire — can make for unexpected bedfellows.

And spitting. But  first, they’ve got to come to blows, right?

Actor turned writer-director Francis Lee revels in the grimy greys of Yorkshire in early spring, treeless hills covered with stone ruins and stone walls that need repair. The accents are thick, the mud is thicker and the romance could not be less romantic. At first.

“Is beautiful here, but lonely, yes?”

Closeups of the stone chipping and animal husbandry of the farm fascinate Lee almost as much as the rough, muddy and explicit horseplay of gay sex among these people in this setting. “God’s Own Country” is not for those squeamish about seeing the blood and guts and offal of farm work.

One touching moment comes when a lamb dies, and Gheorghe, with skill and care, skins it and puts its coat on an orphaned lamb so that the ewe of the dead one will feed her and care for her as her own.

As the two men bond and share their stories, we see Gheorghe’s sensitivity rub off on Johnny, even as we sense that this affair will be secretive, short and intense, but mostly short.

There’s a “Duckbutter” approach to the sex scenes, as if they’re new to the screen and everybody needs a primer on “this is how it goes.”

Secareanu has a smoldering presence, and you can see how lonely, bitter Johnny would fall for him even if he doesn’t know how to fall. But as most of us figure out in our teens and 20s, that “not knowing” how to fall in love thing is a ticking time bomb in any relationship. O’Connor (“Florence Foster Jenkins”) has a gawkiness that makes his reach for “unsophisticated” and “bumpkin” an easy one.

Hart and Jones’ crusty presence grounds the picture, and the unsentimental bluntness which they treat everything going on around them — they’re not blind, you know — gives the story a tender, deflated disappointment. There’s no future in any of it.

This melancholy hangs easily on this quiet, not-quite-romantic romance. Lee may rob his picture of some of its warmth in the process, but in not blinking in his approach to “real life,” he’s made a fine companion piece to the classic “kitchen sink” British melodramas of the ’60s and ’70s.

If there isn’t room for sentiment in this world, how can there be time for love?

MPAA Rating: unrated, explicit sex, adult situations, nudity,

Cast: Josh O’Connor, Alec Secareanu, Gemma Jones , Ian Hart

Credits: Written and directed by Francis Lee. An Orion/Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:45

In short-pitch terms, “The Honor List” is “The Bucket List” with teenage girls.

Its genre is teen girls coming of age dramedy. And its worn-down-to-the-nub formula includes pranks and tears and quarrels and boys and trips to the ol’ swimmin’ hole.

Even its casting is paint-by-numbers. There’s nothing more to be said about creating a quartet of the pretty blonde, the plump blonde, the Asian American and the Afro-Asian teen after Honor, the title character points out how “ethnically,” they make a perfect movie “sandwich,”  a Hollywood casting cliche.

Watch any number of teen comedies or horror pictures,  “Dude” on Netflix for the most recent example, to see other examples of this Hollywood approach to diversity.

Written by Marilyn Fu, directed by Elissa Down, “Honor” is hilariously lacking in edge, tragically short of laughs and exasperating thanks to the thin supply of surprises.

Honestly, it plays like a picture whose agenda was “create a safe space” first, “empower” second, with drama and tension and suspense, pathos and wit all stuff “to be filled in later.” It never is.

Honor, Isabella, Sophie and Piper are Cali-pals when we meet, them, freshman year. Before we have more than a scene or two to get used to them, “Senior Year” pops up.

Class president Piper (Meghan Rienks of Hulu’s “Freakish”) is passed out with a boy in her driveway, unworried that her drunken dad inside the house will notice.

Sophie (Karrueche Tran of TV’s “The Bay”) is brushing off a boy as if she’s already had a lifetime of practice.

And Isabella (Sasha Pieterse of “Pretty Little Liars”) needs re-assurance from her college-age brother (Ethan Peck, 32 and looking it) that “it’s going to be OK.” Parents splitting up, her left behind at home? No. They’re due at a funeral.

Honor (thirtysomething Arden Cho of “Olympus Has Fallen”), a ballerina with big dreams, has died, a lingering illness that none of them knew about. Because they fell out as a quartet years before. She was “our best friend…back when we were ALL best friends.”

Some of the most pointed and poignant scenes in “The Honor List” show the survivors seething at each other (one skips the funeral, there’s drinking at the visitation, etc.) and their classmates back at school, many of whom have the presumption to act as if they knew Honor better. Because, you know, she was no longer friends with her old pack.

One pushy competitive mourner (Its high school, everything is a competition.) suggests they “honor her Japanese heritage” by doing this or that.

“She was TAIWANESE!”

But Honor’s mom has given the girls a mission, and a video. Honor ordered them to finish the bucket list of things they all hoped to do before graduation. It was buried in a sealed paint can (bucket) in the lake. After some reluctance, as each girl is dealing with her own stuff right now, they agree.

The “list” is where “Honor” kicks the bucket. It’s the lamest collection of quests, accomplishments and tasks, all handled without so much as a grin.

“Win a pizza-eating contest,” “Perform at an open mic night,” “Throw a kick-ass party.”

Seriously, if you cannot come up with a better list than that, and if you can’t get a laugh out of a scene where the kids get even with the body-shaming cheerleaders, “Morrisettes,” as in Alannis, you need to workshop that script or call in a co-director who can. Goat-nap the school mascot? Even the dimmest sitcom hack could find a way to make that funnier.

The emphasis is on the “sisterhood,” sans “Traveling pants.” Every girl has secrets, some of them shared with Honor. There are flashbacks and romantic complications. Sophia has made a vow of chastity, Piper has cut a wide swath through the available boys, but Isabella’s brother should be off limits, and Isabella is the hardest on everybody else, probably because her falling out with Honor has given her the most guilt.

The acting isn’t awful, though only Pieterse shows much spark in this quartet. There’s no shame to everyone’s intentions, but there’s no honor in the result, either. “The Honor List” can’t even live up to its bad-pun title.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude sexual material, thematic elements, alcohol use, language and brief nudity – all involving teens

Cast: Meghan Rienks, Sasha Pieterse, Karrueche Tran, Arden Cho

Credits:Directed by Elissa Down, script by Marilyn Fu. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:43

Wartime survival epics are a rich genre unto themselves, and with “The 12th Man,” Norway has one that ranks among the very best.

Give it to run of the mill Dutch director Harald Zwart. He makes his own journey from “Agent Cody Banks” and “The Karate Kid” into the snowy peaks and fjords of Norway pay off with his most impressive movie.

It takes brass to open your picture with this title — “The most incredible events in this story are the ones that actually took place.”

Jan Baalsrud (Thomas Gullestad) is an ex-pat who has trained as a commando in Britain’s Shetland Islands. But when he and eleven other saboteur/commandos sailed a trawler to Norway in March of 1943, everything went wrong. The rest were killed in action, executed on the spot or captured, destined for torture at the hands of the Germans.

Jan alone escaped, urged on by one doomed comrade (in Norwegian, with English subtitles) — “Make sure this wasn’t all in vain.”

Even though he isn’t Errol Flynn, the Rambo of his day, Jan is determined to get on with his mission. But he has a toe shot off in that escape. There’s no chance he can accomplish anything except his own survival, which in itself is a long shot.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, back on the big screen and speaking German, is Kurt Stage, the SS officer in charge of tidying all this up. He’s got a spotless record, and he’s not going to let some subordinate (Martin Kiefer) convince him that missing commando drowned in the sub-freezing fjord he plunged into.

“You’re chasing a ghost!”

“Until we find his body, he’s alive!”

Thus begins an obsessive cross-country man-hunt, interspersed with occasional breaks for breaking the Geneva Convention. Stage likes to oversee the torture, personally. Nazis always do.

The narrative Peter Skyaylan scripted here is conventional, emphasizing the extent of Baalsrud’s suffering and the many everyday Norwegians who risked their necks to help this stranger get to Sweden.

“It’s bigger than just me,” Jan realizes. Eventually.

The story’s bravura, “Saving Private Ryan” opening — a nightmare of a beach landing, under fire and under icy water — is merely glimpsed, its details to be filled in much later.

Gullestad, better known as a Norwegian rapper (apparently), suffers mightily, pain and starvation leading to hallucinations, self-surgery and the like. Rhys Meyers is stunningly convincing as a monomaniacal Nazi, the sort of fellow who dunks his prisoners in freezing water to get information from them, getting in the water himself with a stopwatch to see how much they should be able to endure.

But the picture is also packed with grace notes, touching moments of fear and concern with Jan’s helpers, chats with the children of those who take him in, including a smart little girl who knows her geography and meteorology.

“Have the Germans stolen our Northern Lights?” he teases.

“That’s impossible!”

Zwart never shies away from showing the deteriorating state of Baalsrud’s feet, and dwells a bit too much on the various hiding places, impressing upon us how much Baalsrud endured, the many modes of transport attempted, the many innocent lives he endangered as he was carried, by boat, sled, skis, etc., out of harm’s way.

But it’s no spoiler to say the climax of this crackling good yarn is a dazzler –tense, stunning in scale and you’ll-never-BELIEVE-this surprising.

With “The 12th Man,” Norway has a survival saga to rival “Rescue Dawn,” “The Way Back,” and “Unbroken.” And the Dutchman Zwart has a career-making title that could lift him out of the kids-movie ghetto Hollywood long-ago sentenced him to.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, torture, gruesome injuries and smoking

Cast:  Thomas Gullestad, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Marie Blokhus,  Mads Sjøgård Pettersen

Credits:Directed by Harald Zwart, script by Petter Skavlan. An IFC Midnight release.

Running time: 2:10

This trailer to “Puzzle” brings so many movies about unhappy women who have lived a life that has crushed their souls. The radiant Kelly MacDonald is that woman here, married, with kids and deep, deep depression that her lout of a husband doesn’t recognize.

Then she finds somebody who, like her, loves to solve puzzles. A team is formed. Irrfan Khan plays a version of the character he played in “The Lunchbox,” a man more deserving of a deep soul than the one that deep soul lives with. Oren Moverman co-wrote “Puzzle,” which opens July 18.