Movie Nation

The Old West has never seemed bloodier, grimmer, more Godless or lawless than the version rendered by Dutch filmmaker Martin Koolhoven.

The director of the pictorially striking and tense World War II in the Occupied Countries drama “Winter in Wartime” brings a picture postcard eye to the landscapes, homesteads and rustic towns of “Brimstone.”

But this grimly unpleasant two and a half hour endurance contest is an almost unwatchable, frustrating smorgasbord of blood, guts and gore. Eviscerations and head-shots, summary hangings, gooey childbirth and sickening self-surgery land in almost every scene of this fable.

He tells the story out of order to further muddy/bloody the waters of comprehension. The last thing this stupidly overlong saga needs to be doing is demanding our concentration.

“Brimstone” is the story of a mute farmwife, Liz (Dakota Fanning) raising her little girl, caring for a resentful stepson and married to a much older man ( William Houston).

It’s a tough life, but Liz endures it with an admirable stoicism until a new Dutch pastor shows up in town. The Reverend freaks her out. And since he’s played by Guy Pearce garbed in black, facial scars and hellfire sermonizing, we get it.

But they have history. When he hisses, “I’m here to PUNISH you,” she believes it, even if her husband doesn’t. As that husband is gruesomely murdered and she grabs the children to make her getaway, we start to understand.

A flashback takes us to the rescue of an abandoned girl, Joanna (Emilia Jones), tattered and wandering the wastelands. Chinese immigrants sell her into a life of prostitution lorded over by the pitiless pimp Frank in his Inferno Bar.

We piece together the story that connects the film’s opening to that pre-history through chapters Koolhoven titles “Revelation,” “Exodus,” and the like. We glimpse The Preacher’s early years  out west, with Carice Van Houten (“Black Book”) as his abused wife.

We see sheep gutted “as punishment,” a man disemboweled, murderous highwaymen shooting and hanging one another and prostitutes beaten, abused and hung when they dare to fight back against the assorted depraved cowpokes who frequent Frank’s establishment.

Pearce takes to the omnipresent crack-shot preacher/tormentor with his usual relish. But there’s no pleasure in this monster, or in the fight against him. Fanning doesn’t give us anything more than her usual inadequate reactions to every situation, the curse of her adult acting career. Carla Juri and Vera Vitali, playing hookers, make stronger impressions.

There’s a grim illogic to it all, as if Koolhaven got all his research from “Worst Crimes of the Old West” books. Even though I can buy that in this world, cruelty comes easily and is every man’s default mode, characters act against their self-interest and the relentless, remorseless savagery makes the viewer ache for a justice that never comes, “Retribution” that one chapter in this morbid tale promises but refuses to deliver.

MPAA Rating: R for brutal bloody violence, strong sexual content including disturbing behavior, graphic nudity, and language

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Guy Lucas, Carice van Houten, Kit Harrington

Credits:Written and directed by Martin Koolhaven . An eOne/Monument release.

Running time: 2:28

The first animated film to finally suck the life out of “Sing!” has arrived, and “The LEGO Batman Movie” is packing them in to the tune of $55 million on its opening weekend, per Deadline.com. 

Parents may already own earlier direct-to-video LEGO movies that cover much of this same ground, but they’ve thrown a few big-name actors at this and the result has been almost universally praised by critics. I found it a bit wearying and patience-testing. Some of the freshness has gone out of the novelty of seeing toys talk and joke and dance and save Gotham City. But cute enough, even if it is a bit long.

“Fifty Shades Darker,” the “Fifty Shades of Grey” sequel, is as awful as the first one. But a big-name director made the 8 or sex big sex scenes more titillating. And that’s all audiences come for. Ahem. A $45 million weekend in the US, a HUGE opening abroad.

And then there’s “John Wick: Chapter 2,” a gonzo gunfight/fistfight revenge sequel that’s doing wonders for Keanu Reeves’ bottom line. The world of assassins/code among murderers created for this franchise are cool and fascinating, so it’s gotten good reviews and has great word of mouth and looks to be clearing $30 million by Midnight Sunday.

Much has been made of “Hidden Figures” passing “La La Land” as the number one movie of an otherwise desultory new year. Both are in the $125-135 range. “LEGO” will pass them both by next weekend.

“The Space Between Us” has one last weekend in the top ten and is looking like the biggest bomb of the new year.

The Great Poet played his part, almost too well.

An egoist and charmer, he could be relied on to recite verse, on demand, at parties, at brothels, to strangers on the street.

Callous, yet soulful, devoted yet a womanizer, he lived, walked and spoke (in his public “poet’s voice”) like the national/international treasure he knew himself to be.

Pablo Neruda knew how to carry himself like his pal Picasso, both of them “rock stars” before there was such a thing.

“Neruda”is a playful, picaresque look at the poet at his peak, a man of letters, fame and public service who could turn his voice and withering way with words on his proto-fascist foes in the Chilean Senate as a member there, and a whimsical hedonist who went underground when communists, like himself and his miners’ union friends were being rounded up and killed, or sent to concentration camps in the Chilean desert.

The world already knew Neruda, given a wry, bemused resignation by character actor Luis Gnecco, as the Great Love Poet, author of lines such as ““I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.”

But in his native Chile, he was known for his politics — a man of privilege who served as foreign consuls overseas, a communist convert in the Spanish Civil War, a champion of the working class, the campesinos of his native land, whom he celebrated and urged to action with his political poems.

But when he insults the sitting president on the floor of the Senate, a warrant is issued for his arrest. Neruda, his long-suffering wife Delia (Mercedes Moran) by his side, is spirited off into the night, hidden in safe houses by his fellow communists.

Writer Guillermo Calderon and director Pablo Larrain turn this period of Neruda’s life into a cat-and-mouse game. They over-reach for a tone, an interpretation of Neruda not unlike the one that came out of the Italian romance “Il Postino,” where Neruda gives advice to the lonely postman who delivers his mail on a remote Italian island where the poet was exiled, for a time. Here, the “comedy” comes from the poet’s chief persecutor,  the prefect of the State Police, Inspector Oscar Peluchoneau. Gael Garcia Bernal plays him as Neruda’s personal Javert, a fedora-wearing dandy who narrates the chase that Neruda sets him on.

In this telling, Peluchoneau is a tormented man, unacknowledged by his famous policeman father, sneering at the decadence and hypocrisy of wealthy leftists like Neruda. Let the “revolution” come, and they’d be the first to flea to the comforts of decadent dictatorships that surrounded Chile in the South America of the ’40s and 50s.

Peluchoneau is as Neruda imagines him, an officious fop to be toyed with, led hither and yon all over Chile in a merry but deadly chase. For while Neruda is in genuine fear for his safety and his friends are frantic to get him out of the country, he is also determined to make a game of it, to entertain the people and rally them to his cause.

He leaves paperback detective novels with autographed taunts inscribed inside the covers for the cop to find. He flaunts his fugitive status at brothels and parties, a man all of Chile is talking about even as its government is labeling him a communist traitor.

And along the way, as Neruda takes foolish chances and is foiled at this border crossing or that Chinese merchant ship getaway, he writes and bickers with his protectors and wife, hugs and kisses his adoring public and turns on “the Poet’s Voice” — the sing-song incantation of a priest reciting his famous lines — for one and all.

It’s a playful film, in Spanish with English subtitles, with melodramatic undertones, a score filled with romantic yet urgent strings — the music of Ives, Grieg and Penderecki — telling us “the fat communist” is in peril, even if he seems to be having a pretty good time of it.

Bernal is content to play the straight man in this morbid comedy, tormented by the pursuit and determined to see it through. But Gnecco, a Chilean comic actor well-known all over Latin America for assorted TV series, smirks and recites and plays Neruda as the legend he was and the role of a lifetime he’s become.

MPAA Rating: R for sexuality/nudity and some language

Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Luis Gnecco, Mercedes Moran

Credits:Directed by Pablo Larrain, script by Guillermo Calderon. A The Orchard release.

Running time: 1:47

It’s still as pretty as a toybox, eye candy in the brightest plastic colors and textures.

The creators of the second big screen LEGO toys movie stick to the rest of the formula, as well. There’s one original pop song. Yes, Batman sings in “The LEGO Batman Movie.”

The pop culture gags and one liners, most of them delivered by famous actors this time around, pepper the picture.

But you only get to take big screen audiences by surprise once. And as comfy as the Lego film folks have gotten with a winning formula that extends back to their many direct-to-video “adventures” with toy tie-ins, I can honestly say that this time around, they start to seem a little spent.

At 104 minutes, this CG/looks-like-stop-motion cartoon, drags. The screen is overcrowded with characters and gadgets that make it feel like a long, LEGO commercial.

And the song Batman sings is instantly forgettable, unlike that ear worm “Everything is Awesome.”

It’s still fun, a self-conscious parody that warmly references every big screen Batman dating back to the 1940s movie serial, and the vampy Adam West Batman TV show from the ’60s.

And Will Arnett? The funnyman was born to voice the Caped Crusader,  a self-absorbed, self-promoting “night stalking crime fighting machine” who lives in “sweet, sweet isolation.”

But the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) senses something is missing in their relationship. Like, a relationship. He wants to be known as Batman’s “number one enemy.” But the vainglorious Bat doesn’t give hugs and doesn’t admit that he needs anybody — even a nemesis.

With a new Commissioner Gordon, the former Commissioner’s daughter (Rosario Dawson) vowing the clean up “the most crime-ridden city in the world” with pro-active policing and social service, and with a new haphazardly-adopted ward, Dick Grayson (Michael Cera, perfect), Batman’s going to need to share.

“You can’t be a hero if you only care about yourself.”

We have our lesson to be learned, sharing is caring and work is all about “teamwork.”

And we quickly get a crisis that pushes our hero toward that lesson. Reluctantly. Alfred the Butler (Ralph Fiennes) may revoke Batman’s computer privileges for not sharing, and he’s not shy about letting the Bat know what “fatherhood” demands. But the Bat isn’t biting.

“Vigilantes don’t have ‘bed times.'”

The picture’s giddy opening is topped by some trippy later moments — Batman crashing Superman’s (Channing Tatum) “57th Anniversary of the Justice League” party at his Fortress of Solitude– “What, I didn’t get an invitation?”; visiting every bad guy, from Bane to Penguin, Scarecrow to Tw0-face, in a LEGO version of Arkham Prison.

Then there are the villains Joker releases from The Phantom Zone, a space purgatory where Superman and others have shipped everyone from the Wicked Witch of the West to Sauron of “Lord of the Rings,” Daleks from “Doctor Who” and Medusa from mythology and “You Know Who” from the Harry Potter universe.

Yeah, its a little funny to hear Eddie Izzard do Voldemort with Ralph Fiennes, the “real” Voldemort, playing a butler.

But few characters outside of Batman’s inner circle register, either as written gags or as voices (Jemaine Clement does Sauron. Who knew?).

The jukebox load of pop music montages — “One” “is the loneliest number,” George Michael, Rick Ashley, “We Are Family” and “Fly, Robin Fly” among them — aren’t amusing enough to warrant buying the rights to them.

And while the LEGO lair of the Batman, the LEGO Fortress of Solitude and LEGO Batboat, Batmobile, Bat Zepellin and Bat Kayak, are cute, they only seem to be here for the product placement.

“Mommy, what do I need to build THAT?”

MPAA Rating: PG for rude humor and some action

Cast: The voices of Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Zach Galifianakis, Ralph Fiennes, Jenny Slate, Eddie Izzard

Credits:Directed by, script by . A — release.

Running time: 1:44

Those “Fifty Shades” dullards are still flirting, fornicating, breaking up and tying up in “Fifty Shades Darker,” a film which promises “darker” but delivers “funnier” — with some of the laughs intentional.

It’s a soapy sequel, a drinks-in-the-face/masked ball/helicopter crash/melodramatic mediocrity that a better director (James Foley of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “At Close Range” and “A Perfect Stranger”) can’t lift above laughable.

Meanwhile, English author E.L. James, creator of the ridiculous names Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, typist of such bon mots as “I don’t know whether to worship at your feet, or spank you,” laughs all the way to the bank.

And yes, Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) opts for “the second option.” Otherwise, there’d be no movie.

That’s an achingly obvious flaw in this S&M female wish-fulfillment fantasy. Anastasia (Ana) has broken off with the uber rich “most eligible bachelor” of Seattle (Jamie Dornan), eschewed the pleasures/pains of his “red room” of torture/teasing delights and started her career. But all he has to do is throw flowers her way and promise “New rules” for their sex-play/relationship, and she’s on her back or on her knees again.

The “Darker” of the title refers to the consequences of Christian’s form of sexual release. One of his former “subs” (submissive to his dominance), a tortured soul played without a hint of pathos by Bella Heathcote, is stalking Ana. His initiator (Kim Basinger) into the world of bondage, whips, etc. is still in his life, warning Ana off, disapproving of her in every way.

S&M creates bonds for life. Apparently.

And all the poor girl really wants to do is impress her stubbly, hair-flopped-over-one-eye boss (Eric Johnson), the fiction editor at a Seattle publishing house. The novelist James seems to think it daring or telling that Ana would pursue professional ambitions when her celebrated suitor, who shows up everywhere in a convoy of Audis, could just say “It’s been taken care of” to her every want and need.

The film takes a stab–or cigarette burn — at creating motivations for Grey’s sexual deviance, flashbacks to a tortured childhood and “crack whore” mom. Yawn.

Give Foley credit for making the sex scenes — ten of them — some actual sexiness. He can’t give the fourth-choice actors cast in the leads chemistry, but he can make their copulation titillating and believable. Johnson isn’t outgrowing her mousy screen presence, but at least she’s mastered her orgasm face. Ben Wa balls, elevator gropes and the like have certainly given her enough practice.

It’s all so opulent, from the penthouse Grey calls home to the family mansion (Marcia Gay Harden is his mother, giving this film two Oscar winners) that spawned him, to the stunning, cavernous apartment that Ana manages on an office assistant’s salary.

And it’s all so decadent and empty, designer duds gained without struggle, “trust” and “win her back with the Big Romantic Gesture” moments with no heart, sex without love.

Worst of all, this two-hour clock watcher that doesn’t really go anywhere is the merely the set-up for a third film, whose title at least promises some relief.

“Fifty Shades Freed.” Can’t wait for that.

MPAA Rating:R for strong erotic sexual content, some graphic nudity, and language

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Kim Basinger, Marcia Gay Harden, Bella Heathcoate

Credits:Directed by James Foley, script by Niall Leonard, based (screenplay), E.L. James . A Universal  release.

Running time: 1:53

Paramount has revived “The Ring” cycle with “Rings,” a middling update that has few of the chills and little of the suspense of the J-horror original, or its Hollywood version.

The ever-cloudy Pacific Northwest is still home to “the videotape that kills you if you watch it.” That’s a story related by one young passenger to another on an airline flight.

He looks at his watch, figures he’s safe unless something happens “in the next five minutes.” And, well, you know.

Two years later, Julia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) says her sweet good-byes to her college-bound beau, Holt (Alex Roe). She wonders what’s up when, within weeks, his Skype sexting sessions stop and he won’t answer his phone. She dashes to Spokane to investigate.

The foreshadowing here is that their love is to be as strong as Orpheus and Eurydice, from Greek myth. He was the lover who pursued his dead love to the underworld in order to save her. Julia has let Holt and us know that the days of women being damsels rescued by dudes are gone.

And Holt, it turns out, is in need of her commitment and sacrifice. He’s watched the tape, a hodgepodge of black and white images of a suicide, a well, flies and assorted other images — “clues” as to who haunts the tape, and who is coming to get you.

Holt has seen it. As it turns out, a careless/callous college professor (Johnny Galecki of “Big Bang Theory”) has loosed his students onto the tape, and loosed it onto them. It’s some sort of biology/afterlife experiment. No, it’s not likely to get him tenure.

Julia experiences the horror first-hand, is warned away from watching the tape by Holt, but plunges into the nightmare he and others are living and the mystery their somewhat-clever professor hasn’t quite solved.

“Rings” then loses itself in that mystery, which if you remember the original films, was about a hirsute, murdered child rising out of the well to avenge herself on the world. The mystery is expanded and explained further here, which unravels the story’s inherent mystique.

It’s the random ruthlessness of Samara, the child ghost, that was so hair-raising in the earlier films. Knowing about her mother, changing the timeline of how long ago this crime happened, doesn’t improve the tale or the telling of it.

The deaths cooked up by three credited screenwriters aren’t creative and are only mildly creepy. Director F. Javier Gutierrez manages the lighting, but never the dread tone of the film that made Naomi Watts famous.

None of the cast brings anything like genuine terror or urgency to the proceedings. Only Vincent D’Onofrio, making a third act appearance, acquits himself with honor.

And the finale kind of spoiled the generous mood I was in up to that point — “Well, I’ve seen worse.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence/terror, thematic elements, some sexuality and brief drug material

Cast: Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Vincent D’Onofrio

Credits:Directed by F. Javier Gutiérrez , script by  David Loucka, Jacob Estes and Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Koji Suzuki. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:47

The fists fly, the bullets blaze and the mayhem borders on magnificent in “John Wick: Chapter 2,” a sequel that ups the artistic ante even as it boosts the body count of that sleeper hit about the assassin’s assassin played by Keanu Reeves.

John Wick is “the legend, the myth,” “a man of focus, commitment and sheer f—ing will,” “the boogeyman,” “the ghost, ‘lo spettro,'” and “death’s very emissary.” So everybody in “Chapter 2” says.

It doesn’t matter that Wick, in Keanu’s spare, hoarse voice, mutters “I’m not that guy any more,” to one an all. To everyone who knows him — and that means pretty much everyone in the movie — he still is.

In a bravura opening gambit, stuntman turned “Wick” director Chad Stahelski hurls us back into the action of the first film — a noisy, nervy vintage car (1970 Chevelle SS) vs motorcycle chase that brings Wick to the Russian mob that stole his Boss Mustang and shot his dog.

Peter Stormare is the mob boss — Russians make the best villains, everybody except for Trump knows this — who fearfully regales a subordinate with the chaos that is coming their way. His hilarious reactions, simply hearing the sounds of Wick shooting, stabbing, beating up his minions and retrieving his car, reset the tone.

This is going to be bloody. Those in Wick’s underworld are going to be damned funny, comically querulous and resigned to their fates. And Keanu? He’s not going to say much, just the way he and we like him.

“Chapter 2” is about “a marker,” a chit Wick owes to a fellow member of the elite international underground mob. The oily, polished Santino (Ricardo Scamarico) is owed a hit. And he’s willing to blow up Wick’s house to make him repay a debt.

The code of killers means Wick will take the job. No honor among thieves means he’ll be double-crossed. And it doesn’t matter that the Italians and the rest of the elaborate underworld invented for the movie come after this killer with a staggeringly high price on his head. John Wick cannot be stopped, will not be denied his vengeance.

I love the world screenwriter Derek Kolstad and director Stahelski concoct for this. There’s a chain of mob hotels run by the likes of the glorious old pros Ian McShane and Franco Nero, hostelries where “no blood” can be “spilled,” safe havens for the likes of Wick or whatever mobster he is hunting. The sommelier of the Rome Continentale (Peter Serafinowicz, plummy perfection) doubles as a Fine Firearms for the Well-Dressed Murderer dealer. Guns, like wines, are “robust” or “dessert. The concierge of the Manhattan Continentale (Lance Reddick, deliciously decorous) takes personal service to even greater heights, taking in Wick’s pitbull. There are tailors (with sweatshops) catering to bulletproof fashions, map dealers offering underground escape routes, a panoply of professionals serving other professionals. 

Lawrence Fishburne is a laugh riot as “the Bowery King,” a sophisticate with a homing pigeon  (microchip delivery) scam and an army of “homeless” killers who sit, beg for change or ramble on in dementia as they watch the city, guns with silencers under their tattered ponchos. Ruby Rose is  sexy/scary as the deaf-mute killer in a lesbian chic bob who signs her oblique threats to Wick, who speaks sign language himself.

Reeves is stoic and focused and his adept, showboat gun handling has hints of TV cowboys of the ’50s, though his line-readings are as stiff as ever. Oscar winning singer/rapper Common doesn’t give us much in his scenes as Wick’s chief rival, the man hunting him down. They’re both overly concerned with the epic fight choreography they must master. At times, the overdone staging reveals itself as Reeves or Common can be seen waiting for the other’s next stage punch or lunge before throwing theirs. Jump cuts suggest the action is sped up for the actors’ benefits.

Shootouts — and there are oh-so-many — take place in glamorously-lit catacombs, an ancient crypt turned mafia queen’s boudoir and candlelit bath, Roman ruins turned into an elaborate laser light/house music rave, and in an art exhibit’s hall of mirrors.

It’s all too much, but also too much fun. The best thing one can say for “Chapter 2” is that it’s not spoiled by the knowledge that yeah, they’re hellbent on making Wick into a franchise, even as they shoot themselves into a corner. Again.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence throughout, some language and brief nudity.

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Common, Peter Stormare, Ruby Rose, Ricardo Scamarcio, Ian McShane, Lawrence Fishburne,

Credits:Directed by Chad Stahelski, script by Derek Kolstad. A Summit release.

Running time: 2:02

With a little luck, the hashtag “oscarsowhite” will be but a distant memory when the 89th Annual Academy Awards are handed out Feb. 26.

You could see it in the nominations, which handed out a lot of love to “Moonlight,” “Lion” and “Fences.”

You can see it in Denzel’s surprise win at the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards. Sure, the season-long love fest has been for “La La Land” — it’s always daring when Hollywood dares to shower its love on itself (See “Crash,” “Argo,” etc.). But “Fences” and other pictures seem to have a certain momentum in the buzz. Black actors matter, and so do other performers of color.

And you can see it in the odds bookmakers are giving for Academy Awards, especially those at SportsBettingDime.com , which suggest that maybe the momentum is shifting. Perhaps Affleck is earning the perception of “damaged goods,” perhaps the giddiness over “La La Land” is fading.

Trevor Dueck at Sports Betting Dime says, sure, “La La Land” is still the heavy favorite for Best Picture. And Damien Chazelle seems like a lock for best director.

Ruth Negga is a 15/1 long shot for best actress in the Oscar-ignored “Loving,” my pick for the best picture of 2016 (but not Oscar’s).

But Denzel has closed the gap with best actor favorite Casey Affleck (7/3 on Affleck, 3/1 Washington). The SAG win could signal a tilt in Washington’s direction.

Washington’s co-star in the film he also directed, “Fences,” seems like a lock. The long-deserving Viola Davis (13/7) is where the smart money is going pre-Oscar night.

Mahershala Ali of “Moonlight” is best supporting actor favorite (3/2).

African-American director Barry Jenkins of “Moonlight” is given a very good shot at a best director upset (3/1) but is the favorite (13/7) for best adapted screenplay.

And look at the Oscar nominated feature documentaries. “I Am Not Your Negro,” “The 13th,” and “O.J.: Made in America” — all tightly knotted among the oddsmakers, all African-American subject non-fiction films.

A lot of these predictions don’t jibe with the Golden Globes, but I had the sense, watching a little of that telecast this year and scanning the list of winners, that the Globes have lost the last vestige of their “best Oscar predictor/steal Oscar’s thunder” relevance. Critics Choice Awards, SAG, DGA — still reliable indicators.

And if you’re the wagering sort, that’s what you want.

There was probably never a time when Gore Verbinski could have made a small scale horror picture about a man trapped in a sanitarium. Think of the glorious excesses of “Mouse Hunt.” And that came before the blank check that the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise guaranteed.

So it’s no surprise that “A Cure for Wellness” suffers from elephantiasis. It’s too long, entirely too gorgeous with stunning sets, striking lighting and design, with a finale that is entirely over-the-top.

The visual cues are from Kubrick and Hitchcock — imagery suggesting “The Shining” and “A Clockwork Orange” and Hitch’s “Spellbound.” There’s a hint of Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton” in the conspiracies — business and otherwise — in its plot.

What “Cure” doesn’t do particularly well is introduce a mystery, add menace and heighten suspense in racing towards a conclusion. There’s no “Race” for the “Cure.” Still, it’s just chilling to experience, a novel and thought-provoking take on what ails us and our fruitless search for relief.

Dane DeHaan (“Spider-Man 2”) is Lockhart, a workaholic rising star at a Wall Street firm whose CEO has gone AWOL. There’s panic and menace in the board as they openly blackmail Lockhart into traveling to the Swiss Alps to retrieve a man whose signature is needed on a desperately needed merger, and whose latest communique is, frankly, a tad demented.

Pembroke (Harry Groener) has lost the plot, or maybe found enlightenment with his musings on “the toxin of self-doubt written into our genetic code” in search of “the illusion” of success.

Either way, the firm’s not having it. And Lockhart flies out, takes a train and then a private car to the exclusive-beyond-exclusive mountaintop retreat where everyone engages in tai chi, plays badminton and croquet in pajamas and robe, eats sumptuous meals and takes “the cure.”

The staff of the Volmer Institute seem robotic…or just Swiss in the extreme. The patients, all aged and seemingly a little loopy, let on that “people tend to stay” once they’ve come there. Lockhart’s blunt urgency is met with indifference. But Director Volmer seems reasonable, insisting that this place is just”an enforced vacation.” Of course Pembroke can leave.

“He’s a patient, not a prisoner.”

As the good director/doctor is played by Jason Isaacs, we don’t believe him for a moment.

Lockhart finds himself trapped there, in a robe, “drinking plenty of (medicinal spring) water” and taking “vitamins” by eye dropper — like everyone else. But he’s suspicious and in control of enough of his wits that the torpor of the patients, all the water cures and “off limits” (written in German) signs for wings of this castle-turned-spa make him hunt for answers.

Could there be something to the animosity the townsfolk have for the “people on the hill,” something more than class resentment? Could the place’s troubled Gothic history reveal all?

DeHaan is perfectly cast as the pasty-faced, sweaty, smart but physically over-matched Young Man of the City utterly out of his element in this place where the “sick” are handled with rough, muscular Germanic efficiency. DeHaan keeps the guy interesting even as he seems unable to string his investigations and suspicions into a workable course of action.

The film’s bigger themes, about wellness and an age where end-of-life care is more technologically advanced than humane (Lockhart’s mother is in a home with dementia) are fascinating and high-minded. That explains the film’s funereal pace. “This is IMPORTANT.”

So long, entrancing shots of shiny, mirror-windowed train circling through the mountains, the camera lingering over the exquisite baroque design of the spa’s baths, grounds and repeated images of the patients’ routine — water exercising, dining al fresco, badminton — must be tolerated, even if the horror gravitas seems unsustainable.

It’s frustrating that Lockhart’s understanding of the place reaches a certain point — the aged English patient (Celia Imrie) and winsome young flake (Mia Goth) are only so much help — and stalls, for basically an hour.

And the climax, like the digital deer that crashes Lockhart’s limo leading to his internment as a patient, is fraudulently deflating. All this effort, so little expense spared, and the long-delayed payoff is — well, this?

Verbinski’s efforts to say “This is IMPORTANT” only make us wonder, “Is it?”

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent content and images, sexual content including an assault, graphic nudity, and language

Cast: Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth, Celia Imrie

Credits:Directed by Gore Verbinski, script by Justin Haythe, story by Gore Verbinski and Justin Haythe. A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 2:23

It’s early November, 1939. Hitler and the Soviet Union have invaded Poland, Britain and France have honored treaties and World War II has officially begun in Europe.

And a mop-topped workman, his teeth clenching a flashlight, his hands and knees bloodied with effort, is finishing up a job. He’s filling a pillar at an infamous Munich beer hall with dynamite, setting the elaborate clockwork trigger, and carefully concealing his handiwork.

When others fell in line behind the Nazi regime, while children completed their sixth year of Brown Shirt/Hitler Youth indoctrination, when Reds and other dissenters either joined Jews in concentration camps, fled or went into hiding, machinist/clock builder and master woodworker Georg Elser saw a problem with a simple solution.

As one of his interrogators later put it, to Elser, “Hitler is war — and if he goes, there will be peace.”

“Downfall” director Oliver Hirshbiegel‘s “13 Minutes” is a taut, smart and straightforward bio-drama of this largely forgotten early figure in German resistance to the Hitler regime. Christian Friedel (“The White Ribbon”) makes Elser a sympathetic, over-compensating laborer whose hard life and personal disappointments have as much to do with this assassination attempt as his seething outrage at the injustices and thuggery of the Nazis and Germany’s compliant masses.

We know, even those who don’t know Elser’s story, that he failed. Hitler dodged that bomb, just as he dodged the one by the “Valkyrie” plotters in 1944. The film’s nervy early minutes dispense with that part of the plot. Hitler speaks (audio of the real speech playing behind a look-alike at the podium), makes an early exit and Elser makes a clumsy attempt at a get-away.

Hitler survives and Elser is picked up at the Swiss border, his pockets stuffed with bomb-making gear and schematics. “13 Minutes” is about his interrogation,  and through flashbacks, the life that led him to his date with destiny.

“Heil Hitler, Herr Esler,” Nazi police official Arthur Nebe (the wonderful character actor Burghart Klaußner) offers, upon meeting the prisoner. Elser pauses, thinks and replies “Good day.”

Whatever else he’s done or failed to do in his life up to this point, Elser finds the bravery to not give an inch to the torturers who surround him, whip, punch and burn him with a hot icepick.

Hirschbiegel’s film, based on a script by Leonie-Claire and Fred Breinersdorfer, makes clear that Elser’s past had frustrations, guilt and shame that this one act might atone for.

A womanizing accordion player who later hums to his torturers, he took up with a married woman (Katherina Schuttler, flinty), rented a room in her house and stood by too long as her brute of a husband beat her.

He resents the obligations his drunken father has imposed on his life through his blundering, carelessness and incapacity. He winces, speaks out but shrinks when he first sees uniformed fascists bullying a helpless woman in front of the whole town. Smart-mouthing Hitler Youth who taunt Elser and his family as they walk to a Wurttemburg church is about as brave as this man got.

But when the idea came to him and opportunities fell into place to allow this clever working class Fritz-of-All-Trades to “solve” Germany’s big problem, he took on the job.

There’s defiance in him, but also a sarcastic sense of humor. He taunts his fellow Red Front members for misspelling the graffiti they’re painting on a wall, scat-sings his way into women’s hearts and when asked who ordered him to plant the bomb, cooks up a yarn, through swollen eyes and bloodied lips, about how there are only two phones in the village where he grew up, but somehow Churchill got him on the line to give him his “orders.”

You’re going to feel the timing of this 2015 German (with English subtitles) production is oddly apt long before Elser is challenged by Nebe and the more thuggish Nazi interrogator Heinrich Muller (Johann Von Bulow, volcanic) about how “an ethnic German could hate the Fuhrer so much,” when Hitler is “making Germany great” again.

Ahem.

But as the world is roiled by divisive, history-repeating political shifts that draw comparisons to the 1930s and as Americans face, for the first time, a true “What would you/WE have done when faced with fascism at home” soul-searching, “13 Minutes” reminds us that if one evil man can start a movement, that can inspire one equally fanatical counterpart to try and end it.

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violence and some sexuality

Cast: Christian Friedel, Katherina Schuttler, Burghart Klabner, Johann Von Bulow

Credits:Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel , script by Léonie-Claire Breinersdorfer, Fred Breinersdorfer. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:54