Movie Nation

There have been other documentaries about “America’s Band,” The Beach Boys. There have been books aplenty, especially about the mercurial, unstable musical genius of the group, Brian Wilson.

And there was “Love & Mercy” that got deep into Brian’s later life struggles with mental illness and his controlling, perhaps predatory therapist Eugene Landy.

But here’s what the new documentary “The Beach Boys,” aka “The Disney Version” of their history gets at that I — at least — found fresh and different.

There’s a lot about their pre-history, not just earlier names of the band, but little known earlier members of the band itself. This is rarely highlighted, but with surviving member Al Jardine around to have his say, a lot of that history is plumbed. Jardine’s pre-Beach Boys story is more musically interesting than you’d expect, and more pivotal to their formation and folk harmony sound than one might have gathered.

Late brothers Dennis Wilson and Carl Wilson are seen and heard in archival interviews that reveals more about the sibling relationships and each brother’s musical strengths. Drummer Dennis took up the drums just to make them a performing, touring vocal group/band. Carl’s top flight musicianship is praised. Dennis, famously “the only surfer” in the band, got in and got heard in that sibling dynamic “because I could beat Carl up.”

We see them rise from Hawthorne, California to fame, their enshrinement as “the most articulate spokespeople for ‘The California Dream,'” and their abrupt turn towards musical irrelevance and its reasons.

And Mike Love, the lead singer who developed a reputation as one of the biggest jerks in pop music and explains some of his abrasiveness and pushiness, the lawsuit he filed when the Wilson brothers’ dad Murry sold the rights to their songs (Love did a LOT of the lyrics on their earliest hits). It’s a little shocking seeing Love mellow into someone this reflective and human, getting his due from Brian and others as one of the great lead singing “frontmen” of his era.

The rest of the film is notable for what it skims through — their creative process, the birth of their “different keys on a keyboard” harmonies, the creation of their most famous records, their “rivalry” with The Beatles — and for what it leaves out.

There’s little about Brian’s struggles, no mention of the Landy years, and a seriously short-changed treatment of their “playing their hits” oldies act half-century. The death of Dennis and Carl is not even mentioned.

The film that emerges feels sanitized, much like the band’s overall reputation over the decades, Nancy Reagan-approved California kids who harmonized like angels.

“The Beach Boys” thus makes for a family-friendly biographical overview, endorsed by Janelle Monae, musician-producer Don Was, Lindsay Buckingham and other peers, all of whom back up what made them special and earned them the title “America’s Band,” even though “California’s Band” would have been more apt.

Rating: PG-13, profanity, discussions of drug abuse

Cast: Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford, Bruce Johnston, Paul McCartney, Janelle Monae, Lindsey Buckingham, Don Was

Credits: Directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny, scripted by Mark Monroe. A Disney+ release.

Running time: 1:53

Ronald Reagan’s first biographer expressed exasperation that there “was no ‘there,’ there.” He found Reagan a kind of empty vessel, an actor playing a part.

Lionized by the Right and “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” remembered by the rest of the country for crimes and indictments and reactionary incitements that set the country back decades — he symbolically took solar reflectors off the White House roof and brought outdated World War II battleships out of mothballs, with predictable results on both counts — becomes an indie film starring Dennis Quaid this Aug. 30.

The last weekend of August is traditionally a dumping ground for movies too limited in appeal for summer release, not smart enough for Oscar contention in the fall.

Seems about right. AIDS to Iran Contra, attacking unions, assaulting the middle class and transferring wealth from the middle and working classes to the rich, that senile poseur has a lot to answer for and as a TV mini series some years ago was bullied into not showing the dark side, blunders and historical calamity his administration was, why should a feature film pandering to his fanbase be any different?

But Dennis Quaid and Penelope Anne Miller (as Nancy) class this up considerably, and that could pull in the faithful and those who aged out of moviegoing about the time Miss Daisy acquired a chauffeur.

Mena Suvari as Jane Wyman? Jon Voight as a mysterious Russian influencer/”expert?”

Might be worth a look.

Horror films have consistently under-performed this year. And more than one “popcorn” blockbuster has gone bust.

If it ain’t “Dune,” it isn’t “fresh.” Apparently.

That may have a lot to do with why the fifth “Mad Max” movie, “Furiosa:” A Mad Max Saga,” is such a bust on its opening weekend. Something’s gojng on, because this is turning into the worst box office Memorial Day in this millennium.

No Charlize Theron, with only Chris Hemsworth as a proven “box office” star in the cast, over-praised but repetitive, slow and a franchise seriously showing its age, I’m not surprised it’s under-performing. But it’s not like everybody’s reading my review and staying home.

Has Hollywood priced itself out of impulse purchase or cheap destination entertainment? Maybe.

I don’t root for any movie to fail, even exhausted horror franchises and the lesser lights of the endless parade of comic book adaptations. OK, maybe a few of those. But “Mad Max V” had me pissed by the time the anticlimax arrives and the closing credits rolled.

Projections for “Furiosa” weren’t through the roof, but $40 million was right on the bottom edge of expectations. Based on Thursday night and all-day Friday ticket sales, Deadline.com is saying $34 million, tops, with $31 million more likely at this point.

That’s for a FOUR DAY weekend. Wow. It’s opening at $25.55 for Thurs.-Sun. Ouch.

That sets up as one of the Worst Memorial Day weekends in recent history, with no blocks to bust, nobody’s tentpole pic launching the summer with well over $100 million dollars.

Surely it will pack them in Sunday and/or Monday, just out of curiosity. Surely it’ll surpass the opening of a Chris Pratt-voiced “Garfield” live-action/animated hybrid. But the family-friendly cat picture is on track to manage $32 over four days, and barely lost the three-day race with a $24.78 million take. Heck, a big Monday and the Fat Cat could win it all.

“Furiosa” is doing small-studio/far-lower-budget A24 “Civil War” sized numbers over three days, which officially introduces the word “BOMB” to the conversation. This is Warner Bros. big tentpole pic for the summer, and it’ll be bologna sandwiches all over Beverly Hills after this miscalculation.

The Big-Eyed fury Anya Taylor-Joy may make critics swoon, but she isn’t box office. And this “Fast Slow and Furiosa” movie takes an hour to put her on screen. A few critics pointed out the obvious about the film’s inability to show us anything new, but we are the few, the proud. Potential North American ticket buyers have seen the trailers. They know it’s not showing us anything fresh.

It cost $170 million or so, and overseas box office isn’t overwhelming, either ($33, per @thenumbers). But this is what George Miller gets for making this “Death Race 3000” franchise his entire career (almost).

“IF” opened decently and is only falling off 50% percent, and should manage another $21 million through Monday night. It’ll be over $63 million starting the week, but I doubt if it will hit $100 million.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” has cleared $100 million and will manage 16 million and change by midnight Memorial Day. That’s every bit as unoriginal and popcorn pointless as “Furiosa,” but that franchise is holding up.

“The Fall Guy,” the first BIG SUMMER MOVIE and the canary in the coal mine in terms of lowering expectations for summer cinema hits, is adding another $7 million and won’t make it to $100 million.

Angel Studios’ not-really-faith-based/not-that-compelling “Sight” is opening poorly, $3.5 million over four days. It may have legs, though.

As always, I’ll update these figures as the weekend progresses and more data pops out. Not looking good, though. Not good at all.

A couple of killer brawls and a finale that pulls out all the stops doesn’t drag the martial arts actioner “Blind War” out of the dark.

It’s an Andy On (“Ride On,” “Blackhat”) star vehicle, sort of a modern riff on the ancient “Blind Swordsman” plot that translated into films all over Asia, especially Japan. This Chinese thriller is about a cop blinded in the line of duty, tormented by a criminal quarry, and determined to free his kidnapped daughter from people he crossed in an earlier dust up.

The director of “The Imortal Stone of Nirvana” kicks things off with an over-the-top escape attempt launched at the end of a criminal boss’s trial. One of his lawyers (Yang Zing, who pretty much steals the picture) is in on the caper, which has the boss howling wit delight at the mayhem. But with cops surrounding the courthouse, awaiting the verdict and/or trouble, it seems doomed from the start.

With so many minions recruited to assault the court and with the SWAT teams outside slow to act, maybe they have a shot.

But one cop, Dong Gu (On) jumps the gun because he smells a rat. The assault really set up as the jailed mob boss’s assassination. And the lawyer/femme fatale/assassin Xing Na (Yang Zing) is in love with the cockiest of the killers, a punk who plays it cool disguised as a murderous priest, but who overplays his hand when he injures Dong Gu’s partner and fails to kill that one cop who will seal his fate.

Xing Na is sent to prison, hissing “From this moment on, every breath you take is a gift from me (in Chinese with subtitles). Dong Gu, blinded by a flash grenade, must develop his keen hearing to be able to function and raise his daughter. He’s kicked out of the police for being too gung ho during that caper.

And when that violinist daughter (Yaqi Zhang) is grabbed and trafficked as revenge for his work, Dong Gu must call on those reflexes, that hearing and his special martial arts skills to pursue and battle those who took her.

Xing Na? She busts out of jail during a failed attempt on her life, passes herself off as a fellow cop to the man she’s sworn to take her vengeance on and proceeds to seemingly “help” the father in his mad pursuit up a mobster food chain to the top.

There’s a lot of vengeance going round.

“Blind War” has comically inept cops and veiled Chinese shots at the fictional city of “Manulla,” where human trafficking tracks through every trope of that battered and weary genre — live streaming “auctions” of girls, the rich of non-Chinese Asia bidding away, etc. It’s impossible to place the film in reality, with Caucasian “British” judges and police chiefs and “foreigners” who could be Filipino, old school Hong Kong or Singaporean.

Female characters vie for the title “Dragon King” of this underworld (Not “Queen?”). The blind cop gets into jam after jam, including capture by the local police, but always finds a way out, often with Xing Na’s help.

The plot is teeters between nonsensical and outlandish, with graphic violence and epic shootouts and punchouts punctuating the action beats.

One humorous touch has guns supplied by an Afro-wearing Chinese hustler named “Uncle Harlem.” Kind of racist, but whatever.

The fights are over-the-top and manic, often shot with a hand-held camera and edited into a furious blur. But there’s a video game quality to the body count, the ways our hero dispatches legions of bad guys, the injuries he and his allies survive and the ways he ducks bullets and blow.

The funny bits underscore the silliness of much of what we’re seeing unfold, but the violence brings it all back to “reality.” Not that this is a good thing, not in a thriller this absurdly plotted.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, child trafficking

Cast: Andy On,Yang Zing, Hank Qi,
Zhang Ya Qi and Jane Wu

Credits: Directed by Suiqiang Huo, scripted by A Hi-Yah!/Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:43

It’s been 36 years since Michael Keaton, Tim Burton, Winona & Co. learned why we should NEVER say “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

So naturally, this update features horror comedy pixie Jenna Ortega.

Keaton is back as the title character, and Ryder, the “trixter-demon” curious teen in the original film is all grown up — allegedly.

Willem Dafoe, Catherine O’Hara, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux and Danny DeVito are the newer faces or old Friends of Tim coming round for another laugh or two.

Looks like vintage Burton, even if Michael K. has lost some of the antic fun of his youth.

Sept. 6? We’ll see.

Always surprised that HBO is still releasing movies. They barely promote anything, and in this universe of “choices” you can’t coast on the arrogant memory of “The Sopranos.”

This might have been slated for theatrical release and then pulled for streaming only.

Oscar winner Lange plays “The First Lady of the American Theatre” staring down the end, lost in hallucinations and memories, supported by friends played by Oscar winner Kathy Bates and Pierce Brosnan, with Jesse Williams and Lily Rabe also in the cast.

May 31 on HBO Max.

You can lose yourself in the awe inspiring excess of George Miller’s latest “Mad Max” movie. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is two hours and 28 minutes of action epic that gives “Dune” a run for its money in “Best Filmed Use of Sand Dunes ‘Since Lawrence of Arabia.'”

Revel in the fun, villainous turn by Chris Hemsworth as the hunky, shirtless and long-maned villain, Dementus the Red, appreciate the clever casting of “It” girl Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger version of Charlize Theron’s warrior woman from “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and acknowledge the acceptable job of back-engineering the story to get us to that film.

But this is the first “Mad Max” movie I can remember that just drags through the violent and occasionally exciting later acts. Miller, who has made a career out of these movies, seems to have less to say, and simply runs out of anything to say at all for the drawn-out finale.

The energy wars parable of the ’80s films became more of an environmental one for this renewal of the saga — remember, Miller also gave us the “Happy Feet” save-the-planet animated musicals. But even that seems half-hearted here.

“Furiosa” feels, at times, like a Miller take on the “Fast and Furious” franchise, with motivations for actions and action beats themselves a struggle to invent and work-out because of all that he’s done with rat-rodded “survivor” cars, trucks, motorbikes and ultralight aircraft in the films that came before.

But it begins with grand promise and achieves spectacle — via digitally-assisted stunts, explosions, etc. — on a scale that raises the bar on popcorn pic action. If only it all seemed justifiable and logical.

Little Furiosa (Alya Brown) is kidnapped by bikers who get a tad too close to her tribe’s Edenic “place of abundance.” She eventually falls in the hands of the Messianic biker lord, Dementus (Hemsworth, over the top and fun) who cannot talk her out of directions to her solar powered valley of plenty, run mostly by empowered women.

A girl “all there,” with all her reproductive organs instact, is a valued asset in “The Wasteland.” Dementus, who lost his children in the cataclysm that ended society, raises her. And when his grandiose schemes to rule The Wasteland by beseiging The Citadel (seen in “Fury Road”) come to naught, she becomes a bargaining chip sold to the genetically-damaged, breathing-apparatus dependent leader/breeder of the hellish society there.

Only her wits and toughness will save her. Her mother (Charlee Fraser, in a fierce, breakout turn) hunted her down and came close to freeing her. But at least the child learned that she doesn’t have to be a concubine to the patriarchy from her.

When she grows up “useful,” brave and tough (and played by Anya Taylor-Joy), she is the perfect partner to take on in “the crew” that driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) needs to make transport runs between Gastown, The Bullet Farm and The Citadel. But Dementus and his ever-growing “great horde” threaten this already unjust, dysfunctional nascent civilization. And he and Furiosa have unfinished business.

The film’s best sequence is the long pursuit, mother for child, that opens the picture. Things afterward start to seem repetitive because if you’ve seen one LTD, Valiant, Charger or Microbus rat-rodded for post-Apocalyptic service, you’ve seen it all.

There’s the suggestion that some have worked out just what this “Wasteland” can raise and sustain life with, but there’s little in the way of showing that. This world is all about the gas, bullets and a violently sexist society that’s spun out of notoriously sexist Australian culture.

Promising ideas are hinted at, the best of them being that the women-empowered “green place” is an achievable Eden, while the short-sighted, violent and testosterony male societies ended civilization and are now monstrous, inhuman dictatorships where life, even among the alleged elite, is cheap.

Everybody else lives off scraps in caves, it is implied.

George Shevtsov plays “The History Man,” a learned fellow kept at the right hand of Dementus to remind him of the world that’s vanished and the English language that’s in steep decline as well. Angus Sampson is Organic Mechanic, a guy with some knowledge of biology, physiology and cuisine.

But too few supporting players make much of an impression and few set pieces seem remotely original, as there’s nothing as gonzo of having marauders hunting prey on “Fury Road” with their own guitar hero shredding away on the prow of a truck.

Hemsworth’s Dementus travels in a chariot pulled by three motorcycles, and a lot of the lads in his gang have taken on names like “Mr. Harley, Mr. Norton, Mr. Davidson” and “Mr. Honda.” But that’s about it for wit.

“Where are they going so full of HOPE? There IS no hope!”

Taylor-Joy makes a solid impression as our focused fury of a Furiosa. There’s meant to be chemistry with her fellow “Praetorian.” There is none.

A bigger gripe here is that this film feels more obviously production-designed than any “Mad Max” film. There’s less sense that what everybody’s using, wearing, driving and fighting out is “what’s left after the Apocalypse.” The biker gangs have improvised skis for “war boys” to ride on behind bikes and souped-up cars. The Citadel manufactures an amored supertanker to make those Fury Road runs. It’s covered in chrome. Why?

For one sequence, our heroine is dressed in jodhpurs. Again, why?

There’s a lot of that in “Furiousa,” which one can dwell on when the repetition sets in, when the political parables to today prove too thin to sustain serious thought and the story itself grinds towards an end that points to the beginning of “Fury Road.”

Whatever these films have done for Miller’s career as an action auteur, “Furiosa” is what happens when you saddle your horse to old cars and bikes chasing each other through “The Wasteland” for too long. Even without Vin Diesel, “Fast Slow and the Furious” gets to be a repetitive drag.

Rating: R, graphic, grisly violence

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, George Shevstov, Alya Brown, Lachy Hulme, Angus Sampson and Charlee Fraser.

Credits: Directed by George Miller, scripted by George Miller and Nick Lathouris. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:28

The first time the phrase “the finest actor of his generation” was attached to Robert Duvall was in a cover story in “American Film” magazine in the fall of 1981.

Duvall already had “The Godfather” movies, “Apocalypse Now” and “The Great Santini” to his credit. But a story headlined “America’s Hardboiled Olivier,” about the actor and his prep and performance opposite the already widely-lauded Robert DeNiro in “True Confessions,” seemed to chisel his reputation, his subtle skills and and range in stone and set the stage for his Best Actor Oscar a couple of years later in “Tender Mercies.”

“True Confessions” is an engrossing but somewhat tentative story of sibling rivalry tucked into an infamous Los Angeles murder mystery.

Duvall plays a detective trying to solve a fictionalized version the infamous “Black Dahlia” murder of an aspiring actress. But the story, based on a then-recent novel by John Gregory Dunne, is really about the corruption of 1940s Los Angeles, as Duvall’s Det. Sgt. Tom Spellacy is a former “bagman,” a collector of illegal cash for assorted crooks, and “once a bagman, always a bagman” he is reminded by those who hold him in contempt.

The corruption isn’t limited to the police, where Spellacy’s partner Det. Frank Crotty (Kenneth McMillan, great at this sort of piggish, unfiltered part) openly takes protection money from local Asian businesses. The plot folds in a Catholic Church twisted by money, in bed with shady characters and in need of cover-ups to maintain its power in the city.

We get a sense of Tom’s distaste for this reputatation in his first visit to his brother, the powerful Monsignor Spellacy (DeNiro), aid and advisor to the Archbishop of Los Angeles (Cyril Cusack). A priest has died in bed with a prostitute. We see Tom’s resentment of his brother, his “you’re no better than me” attitude as he does the power-broker priest this professional “courtesy.”

Monsignor Des Spellacy is carefully maintaining friendly relations with the seedy developer, Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning) and Amsterdam’s corrupt lawyer (Ed Flanders). Amsterdam’s money put the Church in its present position, brokering Catholic schools into new housing developments, with every parish underwritten and only a lone older priest (Burgess Meredith) complaining about “The Holy Church” being run “like a business.”

Monsignor Spellacy? “I think he’s a better accountant than a chancellor” of the Church.

DeNiro’s Spellacy eats at the best restaurants and golfs with the rich and powerful. He sees the corruption around him, and we gather that he might still have a conscience about this. Or maybe not.

Tom’s resentment fires his investigation of this new, gruesome (“bisected body”) and his efforts to connect “The Virgin Tramp” murder victim, as the press labels her, to the Catholic power structure. He humiliates his brother in public, insulting Amsterdam and their past “bag man” connection to Amsterdam’s face in a tony restaurant. He grinds his teeth over the way their nursing home bound mother fawns over the priest in the family. And he can turn testy, even in the confessional, where he knows he can pin his sibling down and chew him out and Des will have to sit there and take it.

The “uneven” label this film has worn in my eyes and those of others since its release owes to the clumsy way the script connects one circle of corruption to another, to the too-subtle nuances DeNiro brings to his guarded, morally ambiguous priest, and the way that constrasts with Tom’s explosive, woman-slapping temper.

The murder mystery is perfunctorily handled, hardly what you’d expect if you’ve gone to the trouble of folding “The Black Dahlia” (a thigh tattoo) case into your Cain and Abel allegory.

The framing device has the brothers meeting in the early ’60s to make peace, fifteen years after the events in the movie’s fictive present. It sentimentalizes their relationship even as it makes for an apt metaphor for where the power-broker Monsignor ended up — a parish in purgatory (Joshua Tree and environs).

Director Ulu Grosbard, mostly a stage director, doesn’t do justice to the criminal investigation parts of this sordid story. There isn’t much suspense about everything that is coming to a head. But it’s telling that his second most notable directing credit is another story of sibling rivalry, the very fine Jennifer Jason Leigh/Mare Winningham drama “Georgia” (1995).

In a male-dominated movie that leans into the sexism of the times — all-male Catholic organizations, an all white male police department only integrated by Asians in the coroner’s office (the venerable James Hong) — Rose Gregorio — the wife of director Grosbard — makes her mark as a “madam” at “a five dollar cat house” (brothel) who has “history” with Tom, not that he’ll tolerate her getting out of line.

DeNiro, fresh off his Oscar-winning performance in “Raging Bull,” takes pains to lower the heat and play his priest as quiet and thoughtful. That’s a defensible choice, although it does make the sibling rivalry a dramatic mismatch. The Oscar-nominated Meredith shines in his supporting role, as do Durning (a little dance number before the explosion) and the ever-seedy McMillan.

Two TV-stars to be — Dan Hedaya (“Cheers”) and Pat Corley (“Hill Street Blues”) basically audition for the oily roles that would make them famous, one playing a reporter in perpetual need of a shave, the other another corrupt Catholic shaker and mover.

But this is Duvall’s movie, tracking his character as he goes through the jaded motions, finds a reason to take this case “personally” to “settle a score,” and who lives long enough to regret it. He parks this cop midway between “The Great Santini” and his quiet consigliere in “The Godfather,” and he and DeNiro put on a clinic on naturalism in screen acting in their scenes together.

Much is made of any DeNiro pairing with another challenger to the title “Greatest American Screen Actor” that he’s worn for half a century. What makes “True Confessions” a classic is this rare meeting between Mr. Method and “America’s Hardboiled Olivier,” a collaboration of equals, two of the best ever, matching methods and wits in a film that hasn’t improved with age, but which still can be taught in screen acting courses as a grand example of How It’s Done.

Rating: R, graphic violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Robert DeNiro, Robert Duvall, Charles Durning, Kenneth McMillan, Rose Gregorio, Ed Flanders, Cyril Cusack and Burgess Meredith

Credits: Directed by Ulu Grosbard, scripted by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, based on a novel by Dunne. An MGM/UA release on Roku, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:48

Oh, Indonesian cinema!

You keep getting our hopes up, tackling Western or International genres on film, often getting the look and some of the basics right but never quite closing the deal.

I’ve reviewed scores of Indonesian films over the years, and even taking into account cultural differences (an Islamic country), with films that take a chaste view of romance, action that’s a tad tepid and drama that can be downright dainty, I’ve always found them just too tentative and slow-footed to enjoy.

As there’s little online audience for reviews of such Around the World with Netflix films, I’ve been avoiding Indonesian fare for a while now. But “Monster” seems somewhat Indonesia-proof, at least in concept.

It’s a movie almost totally devoid of dialogue, which lets the visuals tell the story.

“Monster” is a kids-in-jeopardy thriller, two tweens kidnapped by the title character for purposes never made wholly clear — something do to with video, perhaps streaming child porn? Couldn’t get that past censors? Thrill-killings on camera? Kids cut up for cannibalism?

The children must fight their captor, work the problem and escape or die. That’s simplicity itself.

And it’s a remake of “The Boy Behind the Door,” a Shudder release of a couple of years back. Netflix likes buying intellectual properties (scripts) and remaking them in many of the languages and cultures Netflix services. So director Rako Prijanto and adapter Alim Sudio know, more or less, how this is supposed to go, where the frights are and how they can be manufactured. Not that the original film was all that.

But after a promising start, “Monster” settles into a lurching pace that underscore every hokey situation, every illogical “escape” and “That makes no sense” scripted blunder.

It’s got a few suspenseful moments, a couple of early jolts and chills. Then the whole enterprise morphs into an 84 minute long ordeal.

Bib sister Alana (Anantya Kirana, pretty good) notes the creep (Alex Abad) trailing her and her brother Rabin (Sultan Hamongan) from school, and hears the thumping and cries after the bearded weirdo has stuffed the kid into the trunk of his Toyota Crown after luring Rabin out out of the arcade.

Alana finds herself nabbed as well, duct-taped, bound and gagged.

The story’s first act has Rabin facing something like his fate with the most unhurried serial kidnapper/killer ever, and Alana starting that process of “working the problem.”

She bloodies herself freeing first an eye, then her hands and then herself. She doesn’t run for help, as they’re plainly in a big old house in the middle of nowhere. She goes back for her brother, hiding right behind the video-game addict kidnapper as he settles onto the couch to play, ducking into roach-infested cabinets to hide, trying to figure out which of the plot’s (guessing here) seven keychains has the key to open this or that door, Rabin’s shackles, etc.

She gulps for air in panic, at times. Rabin yelps at his plight. But nobody’s in a hurry.

Even after the kidnapper, who “forgot” Alana was still (supposedly) in the trunk figures out he’s being watched and schemed against, he can’t force himself to act swiftly, decisively and logically.

That hobbles the comically drawn-out second and third acts and ends any hope this might be an Indonesian thriller that plays or travels.

Write it off to cultural differences if you want, but if cinema is an international language, thrillers must translate high stakes and building suspense to work pretty much any where in the world. A quicking pace is generally how this is managed.

Aren’t they teaching that in Indonesian film schools?

Rating: TV-MA, violence, smoking

Cast: Anantya Kirana, Sultan Hamongan, Alex Abad and Marsha Timothy

Credits: Directed by Rako Prijanto, scripted by Alim Sudio, based on the script to “The Boy Behind the Door,” by Justin Powell and David Charbonier. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:24

This June 21 Netflix release puts our actress-turned-entrepreneur back in a familiar guise, a beautiful woman underestimated in a fight.

Anthony Michael Hall is among her co-stars.