Movie Nation

In cinephile shorthand, “The First Omen” comes off as an homage to the gory cinema of Dario Argento as imagined by someone who’s only heard descriptions of the famous/infamous Caravaggio of motion picture horror.

For a cynical, “Let’s milk this intellectual property for all its worth” exercise, this fifth film in the “Omen” franchise is self-consciously artistic, gruesomely grisly, and almost wrestling with big issues — abortion, the collapse of Catholicism and a plot to “bring people back to the Church” by scaring them via the Antichrist.

And it’s built around a riveting performance by”Game of Thrones” alumna Nell Tiger Free, as a nun new to a Roman orphanage and hospital where Satan’s spawn might be born.

The film is a prequel to the iconic 1976 Gregory Peck/Lee Remick thriller about a couple raising a little boy named Damien, whom they don’t realize is the Antichrist.

Set in 1971, this “”First Omen” meanders between the cheap-jolts filmmaker Arhasha Stevenson must have been contractually-obligated to provide. The plot is Byzantine, but can’t avoid predictable tropes and situations and “twists” of the genre.

Yet with Bill Nighy as an Archbishop, Charles Dance and Ralph Ineson as priests on opposite “sides” of whatever is going on, with Sonia Braga as a stern and sary nun in charge of the orphanage, you can’t write the film’s ambitions off.

An investigating priest (Ineson) finds his way to an aged cleric (Dance) with the message, “Hiding won’t absolve your sins.” The old priest was mixed-up in a conspiracy that the younger one is trying to unravel.

In Rome, the once-orphaned American Margaret (Free) has arrived to the warm embrace of the Archbishop (Nighy) who sponsored her to be a novitiate at the convent that runs Roman Catholic orphanage and hospital.

She is “taking the veil” in 1971 Rome, where unrest has workers on the streets, as it was in many European capitals. Youth are protesting the Vietnam War and out-of-touch governments everywhere. People “are turning away from the church in droves,” in part because of its ancient rituals, but also thanks to its historical/institutional connection to money, power, dictatorships and authoritarian politics.

And weird things are going on in that hospital. A disturbed teen who draws nightmarish visions of how she sees the world is kept isolated from the others. Treatments and punishments are done behind closed doors.

When now-defrocked Father Brennan (Ineson) gets Margaret’s attention, he tries to enlist her help in finding “proof” of his suspicions, that the Church is manufacturing a crisis to save itself from an indifferent world.

Director Stevenson, tapped to make his feature filmmaking debut with an episode of TV’s “Legion” his most significant credit, treats us to faintly-chilling settings, to shadows and extreme closeups, and a riveting meltdown turn by Free, as Margaret cannot believe what she’s discovering and lives in terror at what her role in it all might be.

The few effects are grisly and old-school shocking, and the period detail — novice nuns enjoying a bit of Roman nightclubbing before they “hide this body (theirs) forever,” getting caught up in marches and riots — is spot on.

But this “Omen” lurches between “dull” and “soul-sucking boredom” more often than any edit or re-edit could fix. The tedium sets in as the pacing slacks, and as the pacing slackens off the stakes are lowered.

There’s little of the “Future of Humanity” urgency of the 1976 Richard Donner film, released after “The Exorcist” and “Rosemary’s Baby” got an increasingly secular world all worked-up over the Devil and what he might do to get our attention.

This script gets so wrapped up in the back-engineering of the story, the nuts and bolts of “There is a beast they’re making,” that it loses track of just how shocking that might have seemed, then and now.

And the shocks themselves are less shocking than you’d hope, and far too few in number.

But to her credit, the cast, especially Nell Tiger Free, never lets on that the terror isn’t real. She never loses her commitment to the character’s reality, even when the picture is serving up the trite, tried and true pro forma epilogue of many an “historic” horror saga.

If only the film around these players had been more worthy of their efforts.

Rating: R, violent content, grisly/disturbing images, and brief graphic nudity.

Cast: Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, Sonia Braga, Maria Caballero, Charles Dance and Bill Nighy.

Credits: Directed by Arkasha Stevenson, scripted by Tim Smith, Arkasha Stevenson and Keith Thomas. A 20th Century release.

Running time: 2:00

A “YA” best-seller drowns in the lazy screenwriter’s worst enemy, endless “VO” of the lead character, constantly telling us her innermost thoughts, in “The Tearsmith,” a tale of orphans who reach puberty bonded by more than just shared trauma.

The constant eye contact and personal space violations just tease out what we know is coming. His protests to “Keep her away from me” (in Italian, or dubbed into English) can’t hide his hunger.And her professed loathing doesn’t disguise her longing.

It’s a pity they’ve been adopted out as brother and sister.

Some clever young adult novelist taking the nom de plume Erin Doom wrote this turgid melodrama, which has been translated into 26 languages so far. But director and co-writer Alessandro Genovesi (“My Big Gay Italian Wedding,” “When Mom is Away”) treats the novelist’s every word like Old Testament Truths. The film is voice-over narrated to death.

“I wanted to wash away his sadness.” “So many times I was unable to feel the raw detachment that I wish I could.”

Voice-over narration takes the film out of the hands of the actors, who could SHOW us literally every emotion, reaction and consideration the author presents as interior monologue on the written page. It’s the crutch Genovesi and co-screenwriter Eleanora Fiorini use to beat this slight but forbidden fruit-edgy teen romance to death.

We meet tween Nica on the day her parents are killed in a crash on a road trip. Her mother had just told her “The wolf is just the villain (in fairy tales) because somebody said so.”

The words will haunt her, and turn up in that voice-over once or twice, as Nica — named for a butterfly — is sent to a Gothic orphanage where cruel Miss Margaret reigns.

It takes years for this damaged child (played by Caterina Ferioli) to be adopted out, time enough for her to make friends among her fellow orphans, and make one enemy for life.

Rigel (Simone Baldassari) is a piano prodigy, a brooding, pale, mop-topped hunk with voluptuous lips and faraway eyes. All Nica can think of when he’s around is her mother’s necklace, which he snatched off her neck on Miss Margaret’s orders the day she arrived.

Then a family takes her in, and just as they’re leaving on the day they pick her up, they stop — transfixed by the soulful piano stylings of the boy named for a star.

Next thing she knows, Nica’s escape from this institution whose inmates nicknamed it “Grave” is ruined because she’s to finish her teens in the company of her tormentor.

“Moth,” Rigel calls the butterfly-named Nica.

Rigel has a scary intensity, and that shows itself in violence at school, where he busts up a school bully and tries to intimidate the boys who are drawn to Nica like you-know-whats to a flame.

As she makes friends and gets the attention of even more boys, Nica starts to ponder just why she hates Rigel, how that started, and if it was ever fair. And he’s easy on the eyes. As their “parents” are formalizing the adoption process, her love/lust timing could not be worse.

“The Tearsmith,” taking its title from a nightmarish fairytale figure whom Nica accuses Rigel of being, with Rigel returning the accusation, draws out this long mating ritual, giving us clues about just what went on in that orphange and how everybody who spent too much time there is “broken” — most too broken to cry.

Like a lot of Italian teen romances and sex-comedies made for Netflix, “Tearsmith” is a little titillating, but never terribly interesting. The characters are bland archetypes, right down to their haircuts.

One curious thing about it is how the story’s timeframe is handled. The fashions and the 1970s Jeep Wagoneer that Nica’s parents are driving when they crash suggests she’s a tween 50 or so years ago. The later teen scenes show us 1980s cars, and older ’70s models, in the background. That works.

And then somebody pulls out a cell phone. For all the YAs out there unaware of this, there were no “smart phones” in the ’80s or even the ’90s.

It’s not enough to make you write off the entire enterprise. But it does add to the unreality of it all, with all that voice-over, all that torpid dialogue — “I beg of you.” “This path is nothing but thorns!” The chest heaving performances are sort of “Twilight Lite.”

The lack of surprises, the contrived nature of the conflicts that turn into love connections and the cumbersome voiced-over-to-death technique and the abandonment of the whole “tearsmith” metaphor render this potential teen tearjerker nothing to cry over.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Caterina Ferioli, Simone Baldassari, Alessandro Bedetti and Nicky Passsarella

Credits: Directed by Alessandro Genovesi, scripted by Eleanora Fiorini and Alessandro Genovesi, based on the novel by Erin Doom. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:46

For his feature film directing debut, the British-born Indian star Dev Patel takes a simple vengeance tale and all but overwhelms it with furious action, flashy camera work and breathtaking editing. And I’m kind of OK with that.

A Jaipur “John Wick,” with exotic settings, extensive blood-letting and Subcontinent magical realism? Who wouldn’t be?

The Wick franchise is jokingly referenced in “Monkey Man,” and that’s apt, as the name-check comes from an underground gun dealer peddling “Chinese” counterfeit pistols like the ones featured in those films, our hero lost someone close to him and will kill his way through villains to have his revenge, and even though the “someone close” wasn’t his dog, he does befriend and train a puppy in one sequence.

It’s a bloodbath featuring a Man with No Name hunting a murderous police chief and those in league with him, including a guru/religious leader (Makrand Deshpande, smooth, self-righteous and sinister) who has used his prominence to endorse a new, discriminatory and violent nationalist political party.

Yes, it’s got Indian cuisine, Indian affluence and Indian squalor, the myth of the Hanuman (Monkey Man), underground mixed martial arts brawling and hero haunted and triggered by trauma in his past.

But there are themes ripped worldwide headlines of the moment — religious intolerance, transgender abuse and the rich, connected and corrupted practicing populist “State Capture” in the world’s largest democracy.

Patel’s hero-figure shares a crowded hovel with many poor street people like himself. His primary means of support is masking up as a monkey and throwing fights in the underworld gym of promoter/hustler Tiger (Sharlto Copley, hilariously brutish). There’s a “blood bonus” if “The Kid” lets himself get beaten up in the ugliest ways.

But the kid has a goal, a quest. And he’s got friends. Pickpockets help him acquire a stolen purse and get a meeting with “Kings” nightclub/brothel owner Queenie (a fearsome Ashwini Kalsekar).

Broke, practically homeless, he begs her — “Give me the jobs no one wants to do.” That’s how he ends up washing dishes in the kitchen of the ground-floor restaurant. That’s how he gets close to his quarry, Chief Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher, a brutish hulk). That’s why he visits the illegal gun dealer who offers to “John Wick” him up. A .38 revolver will have to do.

But the best-laid plans of slumdog avengers oft go awry, as this tale will have fights, shootouts, breathless handheld chases on foot and by tuk tuk, and failures, along with a “training” sojourn with a temple occupied by oppressed transgender devotees guarding Shiva the Destroyer’s sacred tree.

There’s a reluctant, short, one-legged motormouthed confederate (Pitobash), a sympathetic hooker (Sobhita Dhulipala) and pretty much every action trope we’ve seen in 100 years of thrillers, many of the same ones that turned up in the “John Wick” films.

Patel and “Whiplash” cinematographer Sharone Meir keep the camera so close we can smell the street food, the blood, sweat and squalor, sample whatever the rich and infamous are snorting at King’s and have our heads snapped-back by the in-your-face violence.

The lithe, martial-arts-trained Patel makes a convincing fighter, and the “Slumdog” star makes us believe the nightmarish flashbacks his character went through that have him so hellbent on settling scores.

Even if the story beats are as obvious as the class war messaging — “They (the corrupt rich) don’t even see us!” — “Monkey Man” lures us in, just close enough to land a laugh, a kick or a savage knockout punch that will make you go “Wow.”

Patel, who makes most of his films in his native UK, has made a distinctly Indian (in Mumbai and Indonesia) thriller adhering to a strict Hollywood formula, a film tailor made to capitalize on the growing box office clout of Indian cinema in North America. And best of all, he’s managed it at a Western pace and running time, a full hour shorter than the equally over-the-top and somewhat overdone “RRR.”

He’s never had trouble finding work as an actor. From now on he should be juggling those demands with directing ones, because “Monkey Man” gives a well-worn genre a furious and funny kick in the ‘nads.

Rating:  R, strong bloody violence throughout, rape, profanity, sexual content/nudity and drug use.

Cast: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Sobhita Dhulipala, Ashwini Kalsekar, Sikander Kher, Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, Adithi Kalkunte and Makrand Deshpande

Credits: Directed by Dev Patel, scripted by Paul Angunawela and John Collee A Universal release.

Running time: 2:01

Two 2-hour movies, previewing back to back.

“Omen” and “Monkey Man.”

It’s early April, so we’re not getting our hopes too high. But somebody’s gotta be good enough to get that pre summer money.

Here we go.

Golf, an elitist sport long identified with “white privilege,” is challenged in “The Long Game,” a feel-good dramedy about a plucky team of Mexican-American kids who took on racist Texas and racist Texans in the 1950s and integrated golf in the process.

A very good cast, timely themes and Colombian (!?) locations that pass for Del Rio and environs in the mid ’50s recommend this formulaic film, based on a true story, whose script struggles with too many contrived conflicts and cloying touches for its own good.

Jay Hernandez takes a break from “Magnum, P.I.” to star s J.B. Peña, the new superintendent of the Mexican-American corner of Del Rio, where San Felipe High School resides. A WWII combat veteran (the script erroneously puts this Marine at Monte Cassino) starting a prestigious job, with a former commanding officer now the club pro (Dennis Quaid) putting in a good word for him, J.B. figures he can get into the prestigious Del Rio Country Club.

No dice. The members “are just not used to seeing a Mexican on the golf course,” the “my hands are tied” club director (Richard Robichaux) says with a sigh.

The only “Mexicans” there are the “invisible” groundskeeper, Pollo (Cheech Marin) and a group of five teens who caddy for rich white folks and their spoiled offspring.

Caddies Lupe, Felipe and Mario (José Julián, Miguel Ángel García and Christian Gallegos) enjoy the game enough to play “at” it on a piece of land next to the abandoned railroad tracks, where they’ve improvised a couple of holes. They even let hapless Gene (Gregory Diaz IV) in on their tips-driven gig and their fake course.

But it is the rebel Joe (Julian Works) who has the real skill and talent. It’s just that he’s the one who doesn’t let insults from the patronizing members of the club — “You boys watch the fingerprints when you load the car with the bags.” — pass. The racist judge (Brett Cullen, perfectly vile) is sure to have his car urinated on for his contempt.

When Superintendent J.B. ID’s the “golf” kids at San Felipe High, he sees a way of gaining “acceptance” in this “gentleman’s” sport — for himself, for the kids and those who follow. He recruits these cuffed-jean punks to form a golf team that will finagle its way into high school competition and integrate the sport and that one country club in the process.

Quaid’s Frank Mitchell will be their assistant coach, the one who works on their swings, nerves and short game while J.B. teaches them to tuck in their shirt tales, dress appropriately and “look right” according to golf’s “unwritten rules,” showing that they belong on the course with the priveleged white boys.

“No Spanish” on the course, either. J.B. is trying to Booker T. Washington the kids into acceptance.

But as they endure racial slurs and cheating, we have to figure that approach won’t work, and won’t last.

Director and co-writer Julio Quintana (Neflix’s “Blue Miracle,” starring Quain, was his) and his co-writers do a good job of showing us the limited horizons and circumscribed lives of these Latino teens. Even their principal (Oscar Nuñez from “The Office”) spends his time giving them “a taste of military discipline” because the military might be their only escape from “working the fields” in this corner of the world.

Joe’s disapproving Dad (Jimmy Gonzales) tells his boy “You’d better bring your sombrero” to this white world. “Whenever you’re invited to a gringo party, you’re either the entertainment or the help.”

Groundskeeper Pollo, wearing a cage to keep the members from “accidentally” pelting him with balls as he maintains the course, may be ironic when he talks about “knowing my place.” But J.B. sees “the long game,” getting white folks used to seeing “Mexicans playing golf,” making them figure out that “We’re more than just caddies and cannon fodder.”

Yes, this is preachy. The teen love story (featuring Paulina Chávez) is shoehorned in, as is a “couples” golf outing that turns ugly. That contributes to the movie’s meandering pace. Some of the conflict is organic and historic, while other overreactions seem contrived.

There are anachronisms beyond that Marines at Monte Cassino bit (automobile vanity plates didn’t turn up until the ’70s). And Quaid, delivering a little twinkle and an occasional “right side of history” zinger, has to work extra hard at not portraying the cliched “white savior” in all this, much as Kevin Costner strained against that “type” in “McFarland, U.S.A.”

But for all its shortcomings and self-seriousness, the cast and the story strike the right almost-light tone for this latest appeal to the “better angels of our nature.” A teen excursion “across the border” doesn’t go as planned, or according to audience expectations. And Nuñez plays his principal character as comically-clueless and comically “related” to everybody.

A light tone, just enough compelling back-stories and just-high-enough stakes make all the difference in the world between formulaic “plucky underdog” sports movies that work, and those that don’t.

Rating: PG, some violence, mild profanity, racial slurs, thematic material.

Cast: Jay Hernandez, Julian Works, Jaina Lee Ortiz, Brett Cullen,
Paulina Chávez, Miguel Angel Garcia, José Julián, Gregory Diaz IV, Christian Gallegos, Cheech Marin and Dennis Quaid.

Credits: Directed by Julio Quintana, scripted by Paco Farias, Jennifer Stetson and Julio Quintana, based on a book by Humberto G. Garcia. A Mucho Mas Media release.

Running time: 1:52

The world’s most popular sport is bound to produce scads of formulaic sports dramedies about plucky underdogs and the challenges they face mastering or at least embracing “The Beautiful Game” in pursuit of some higher um, “goal.”

“Next Goal Wins,” “Holy Goalie,” and “Bend it Like Beckham,” even the delightful Egyptian “Best International Feature” submission “Voy! Voy!” are just variations on the same formula that Hollywood trotted out for “The Big Green” or “Kicking & Screaming” — soccer as a backdrop for some other life lesson that characters need to learn.

But I’m not sure the world needed a maddeningly half-hearted two-hours-plus soccer dramedy about the “journey” and trials of players who take part “The Homeless World Cup” of soccer.

Surely the director of “Wicked Little Letters” and the screenwriter of “Millions,” “24 Hour Party People” and “The Railway Man” had better offers than this lame take-the-money-and-phone-it-in “feel good” soccer comedy.

The story of the English club recruited by a former pro soccer scout and coach to play in that year’s Rome Homeless World Cup, this “Beautiful Game” (that Pele-coined phrase/title’s been beaten to death on many other soccer films) barely humanizes the players and fails to raise the “How I became homeless” sentimental stakes that would give the story pathos.

It even shifts points of view and tries to show the “trials” of a Japanese team, a South African squad and an American all-women team competing against men, but doesn’t come close to justifying those sidebars from the main story.

Lacking much of anything else, “Game” becomes about “the games.” And while those four-on-four, 14 minute “tests” played on outdoor basketball-sized courts are novel, the odd bicycle kick or umpteenth tie-score “shoot out” isn’t enough to build a movie around.

Michael Ward of “Empire of Light” and “The Old Guard” plays Vinny, a soccer fanatic who haunts the fields near where he lives, mimicking radio broadcasts of matches as he watches and then showboats his way into youth games.

Bill Nighy is Mal, a “retired” scout who spies him, sizes Vinny up and rescues him from a pummeling by parents for messing up their kids’ match. Mal suspects something about Vinny, something he’s picked up on by coaching this men’s team he’s been in charge of for years.

Vinny, like the other members of this English world cup team, is homeless. Estranged from his wife and daughter, barely employed and living in his car, Vinny’s too proud to admit the dire nature of his situation. But judgment-free Mal sees all these players as men who have “fallen through the cracks, lost their way.” He persuades the 20something with the flashy moves to join in, take a free trip to Rome and help England “score some goals” in the Homeless World Cup.

The other players have back stories of varying degrees of interest. Enthusiastic and hyper Nathan (Callum Scott Howells) is a recovering junkie. Pedantic numbers-cruncher Aldar (Robin Nazari) is a Syrian refugee, with a shoplifter and others whose “How I ended up homeless” stories are less sketched in.

There’s very little practice and zero bonding as they make their perfunctory way to Rome, where the viewer is given a taste of the older and more shame-filled Japanese team managed by the idealistic martinet Mika (Aoi Okuyama) and the South African squad, managed by a Jesus-praying/trash-talking nun (Susan Wokoma) and the “illegal” South American refugee (Cristina Rodlo) who is the emotionally fragile star striker for the U.S. team.

Vinny judges and shuns his teammates, and he and we must learn the “secret” shame each has and “reasons” soccer legend Mal takes on this quixotic quest.

Ward gives the most interesting performance, on and off the (paved) pitch, and seems the most real character in the thing. I love Bill Nighy, but this script ensures he’s the least convincing soccer coach since Will Ferrell. Valeria Golino is colorlessly cast as the director of this “cup.”

About the only thing I took from this “Beautiful Game” was an understanding of the Homeless World Cup as an event. Homeless players are only allowed to participate in one “cup.” You can’t make a career out of homelessness, or game the system that way.

And the four-on-four, small “pitch” and short games produce a hockey-like sport that is a helluva lot more intense and entertaining than the film’s opening “It’s still nil-nil (0-0), but WHAT A game!” commentating.

But otherwise, this is just a “big game” formula sports movie that aims low and still comes up short.

Hey Netflix, maybe try spending the money to option that Egyptian marvel “Voy! Voy!” with its bigger laughs, higher stakes and genuine suspense. This “Beautiful Game” is an ugly waste of two hours and five minutes.

Rating: PG-13 for some language, a suggestive reference, brief partial nudity and drug references.

Cast: Michael Ward, Bill Nighy, Callum Scott Howells, Kit Young, Robin Nazari, Sheyi Cole, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Valeria Golino.

Credits: Directed by Thea Sharrock, scripted by Frank Cottrell Boyce. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:05

Bill Skarsgard…because there aren’t enough Skarsgardlings in the cinema, with Michelle Dockery, Jessica Roth, Sharlto Copley, Isaiah Mustafa and Old School Famke Janssen star in this gonzo bloodback about a dead and mute guy who goeth on a rampage.

And again, everybody’s favorite animation voice-over goofball, J. Jon Benjamin is the little nerdy voice inside of the “Boy’s” head.

April 26.

What a charming little animated whimsy “Chicken for Linda!” is.

It’s an adorable cartoon for French students of all ages, by turns sweetly sentimental and seriously slapshticky, a tale of a child who craves a dish her father used to make her, and her widowed mother’s frantic efforts to deliver it in the middle of a national strike, mass protests and freely-acknowledged incompetence when it comes to killing and butchering a live chicken.

Because that’s what this meal boils down to.

“Vive la France” and all that. But work stoppage/police action de damned. There’ll be hell to pay because “Linda veut du poulet!”

Co-writers/directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach show us a child who, as a toddler, saw her father die over dinner, whose mother Paulette still grieves and who only loses her temper when Linda keeps “borrowing” her ring from her late husband.

Accusing the child of “stealing” that ring, and “lying” about it, Paulette (voiced by Clotilde Esme) is in a fury right up to the moment she realizes the fat cat Gazzo swallowed it, and threw it back up.

She used the French word for “dumbass” in lashing out at her kid. She slapped Linda when she parrots the French word for “dumbass” back to her mom. Whatever can she do to make it up to her little girl?

“Tell me!” she pleads, apologetically (in French with subtitles). “Anything!”

“Chicken with peppers,” little Linda chirps.

It’s raining. There is no school because of the work stoppage. No stores are open. A restaurant that appears to be serving has a waiter who comes up to customers with a covered dish, under which is a simple note.

“En greve!” On strike!

A monkey at the zoo wears the same slogan, which is plastered on placards and grafitti in the city. There is no “chicken” to be found.

Desperate Paulette leans again on her had-enough-of-this-nonsense older sister, but practical Astrid (voiced by Laetitia Dosch) is no help.

But that egg farm on the edge of town? Surely they have chickens to sell. “Not dead,” the teen in charge declares. “Not for sale,” he adds, going back to practice his guitar.

Paulette comically unleashes a coop and clumsily catches one. And that’s where the REAL trouble begins.

The cops get involved. The neighbors, too. Astrid gets yanked out of a yoga class she teaches over this. Hard to stay “zen” with all the things her kid sister is messing up. And even if Paulette isn’t arrested, how will she deal with a live chicken?

“Cut off its head? Suffocate it? WRING its neck?”

Linda, who doesn’t know what a “strike” is, but knows she’s got to have that chicken with peppers, is full of ideas.

The animation style here is outline-sketch limited but fluid and lively. A lot of the drawn moving figures are reduced to simple blobs of color, especially when seen from afar.

The filmmakers throw in generational jokes, as in “How old does someone have to be to have grown up on a farm and know know to kill a chicken?”

There’s a “Breaking Away” homage involving mother and daughter on the lam in a melon truck and a dogged cop on a bike chasing them as the driver enjoys Felix Mendelssohn’s “Italian Symphony.”

The story skips through charming and grating supporting characters, through a near-riot and kid-led protest over police efforts to grab the chicken, along with a couple of musical moments, and a production number finale.

“Chicken for Linda!” is just edgy enough for adults to enjoy, but not so edgy as to alarm parents who want to watch this with their Pixar-aged children. Still, there is one question every adult must ask before unleashing “Linda,” her mom and that chicken on your little girl or little boy.

“How’s his or her French?”

Rating: unrated, mild profanity, avian peril

Cast: The voices of Mélinée Leclerc, Clotilde Hesme and
Laetitia Dosch

Credits: Scripted and directed by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach. A GKids release.

Running time: 1:16

I didn’t take a shine to Orson Welles‘ “Mr. Arkadin,” which I believe I saw under the “Confidential Report” title back in grad school. My recollection was that it screened as a very rough print, and probably short enough to not make nearly as much sense as it should have.

Such was the state of Welles’ legacy, his lesser known and even best known films, in the years after his death.

But efforts in the early 2000s to restore it and perhaps return some of the “lost” footage recovered in other prints fleshed the movie out. The Criterion Collection has a “comprehensive” cut of it that runs 1:47, the shortest versions — there are seven in all — ran just under or over an hour and a half.

And now the cheap cineaste’s best friend, Tubi, has a fine-looking print that runs 1:40, the so-called “Corinth” version (discovered and rescued by Welles’ pal Peter Bogdanovich), which may be pretty close to Welles’ original intention. It makes sense. It’s flashy in all the best Wellesian ways, echoing earlier films of his and others (“The Third Man” and “Journey into Fear,” for instance), presaging his turn as Falstaff in “Chimes at Midnight.”

Welles himself pops off the screen in one of his most colorful performances, a brooding, bearded, towering presence (often filmed from below) to whom he’d add a twinkle to become “Falstaffian” for “Chimes.”

As a Welles thriller, it’s fun and brisk, and compares favorably to “The Stranger” and his work in Norman Foster’s (Welles directed some of it) “Journey into Fear,” if not on a par with “Lady from Shanghai” or that masterpiece that was Charlton Heston’s gift to Welles and cinema history — “Touch of Evil.”

The future Mrs. Welles, Paola Mori, was “introduced” in this film, playing the jealously-protected daughter of the title character. Her dialogue was looped/dubbed by Billie Whitelaw, but the soundtrack and editing here don’t give away Welles’ frequent dubbing of co-stars’ dialogue during his broke, “bad sound” years of Euro-filmmaking.

But those years also offered him an embarassment of riches when it came to casting. Michael Redgrave and veteran character players Akim Tamiroff, Mischa Auer, Jack Watling, Suzanne Flon, Peter Van Eyck and even Gert Frobe (as a German cop) turn up, most of them heard in their own voices.

The plot, which Welles cobbled together out of episodes of his British radio series, “The Adventures of Harry Lime,” based on his character from “The Third Man,” concerns an American hustler and cigarette smuggler, Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) who gets caught up in intrigues and murder when he’s hired to investigate Europe’s most mysterious post-war millionaire, Gregory Arkadin.

The fellow who hires Van Stratten is Arkadin himself (Welles), whose name was whispered to Guy and his “bubble dancer” girlfriend Mily (Patricia Medina) by a man (Grégoire Aslan) they find bleeding out, freshly-stabbed on the docks of Naples.

Despite the fact that Arkadin “runs the greatest spy system in Europe,” he wants Van Stratten to follow the clues offered by that dying man in Italy. Claiming “amnesia,” Arkadin is plainly concerned about his past, perhaps because the rich man with villas all over and a castle in Spain (Segovia was a filming location) doesn’t want his daughter to know who and what made him. References to running faulty guns to “the communists in China” and “building roads for Mussolini” in Ethiopia tip us off.

As Van Stratten starts traveling the world on Arkadin’s dime, learning Arkadin’s “story,” the word “gang” comes up, time and again. What has he gotten himself into?

As the story is framed within a flashbacks from a fretful “I’d better tell you my story” conversation with a broke German ex-con (Tamiroff) in snowy Munich. As Van Stratten insists that he “save” this crook’s life “to save my own,” we know the young American has finally figured this mystery out. He has 100 minutes to clue us in.

Former child actress Sasha Pieterse has the dual role lead, with Parker Young the hunk trapped in the sites of twin sisters up to no good.

Nestor Carbonell and Mira Sorvino also star.