Movie Nation

The “s”  word is never used in “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1,” the first film of a planned trilogy of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus. But it’s there in spirit, whispered off camera by the heroes of Rand’s exceptional-people-intent-on-doing-exceptional-things tale, saving the economy, fighting “the government” and succeeding in spite of a vast “pay your taxes” conspiracy aligned against them.

After years of teasing, tempting notions of how this book might be filmed, with the likes of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt attached for the longest time, it arrives in theaters a lumbering, stale and retro feast for Rand’s converts — an eye-rollingly clumsy amble through a Middle Earth of Monopolists for the rest of us.

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It’s great to see Jesse Eisenberg break out of his nebbish trap, just a bit, as a swaggering, sarcastic slacker in “30 Minutes or Less,” his latest collaboration with his “Zombieland” director.

But it’s sad to see that Danny McBride can’t escape his raunchy redneck rube niche.

Their combination — Eisenberg as a pizza delivery guy kidnapped, strapped into a bomb vest and made to rob a bank by McBride’s dopey thug — makes “30 Minutes” a fitfully funny farce, a caper comedy with blood and bad language. Amusing at times, it still feels like a letdown after Ruben Fleischer’s gonzo “Zombieland.” For all the need for speed that this very short movie’s title implies, “30 Minutes” lacks urgency.

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Note to any future filmmakers planning on using that played and played-out horror subgenre, the “found footage” film. Pay attention, please. It’s kind of important if your thriller is built on “found footage” that there be some way humanly possible for that footage to be “found.”

Thus, saying “84 hours” of secret NASA film from a secret final mission to the moon was uploaded to a website — go here, save yourself the ticket price – is laughable if what you’re claiming is that there were cosmonauts and astronauts killed by, um, something on the moon. And the video and FILM footage you claim to have uploaded was left up there with them.

Thus, every scene in the silly and short “Apollo 18″ is simply beyond the reach of that absurd claim.

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“The Debt” is the first movie in which Hollywood “It” actor Sam Worthington gets around to showing us what all the fuss was about, pre-”Terminator,” pre-”Avatar” and pre-”Clash of the Titans.” As a guilt-ridden Holocaust survivor now a Mossad agent determined to bring a war criminal to Israeli justice, Worthington suggests vulnerability, compassion and layers of character that none of his action blockbusters allowed him to.

“The Debt,” a very good 2007 Israeli thriller with Cold War and Holocaust connections, earns a nerve-wracking and entertaining Hollywood remake.

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Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle may be “the last of the independents.” But this boozy, bluff and blunt redhead sure is a hard man t’love.

He’s a racist — or at least is very comfortable coming off that way. For shock value, don’t you know.

“I thought only black lads were drug dealers. And Mexicans.”

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In a remote snowy forest in the far north, a figure in camouflage stalks a reindeer with bow and arrow. An arrow flies, the deer tumbles off across a lake to die an agonizing death. But the hunter, a teenage girl , gives chase.

“I just missed your heart,” she observes, and then dispatches the beast, skins and dresses it. Her dad (Eric Bana) is the only one not impressed at her prowess. He’s given to ambushing her like Kato in the “Pink Panther” movies — constantly testing her, their knife fights preparing her for the ugly outside world he’s protected her from all her life.

“You must always be ready,” he warns. “Adapt. Or die!”

What he has raised here north of the Arctic Circle is a strong, resourceful and remorseless killing machine. And what he has in mind for her is the heart of “Hanna,” a furious neck-snapping thriller that summons up memories of a dozen other movies and manages to improve on most of them.

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