Movie Nation

The fights are furious but the convoluted political thriller surrounding them slows “Heart of the Hunter” down. It’s a South African action flick with almost as many characters and agendas as tribes and regional languages as the country itself.

We hear English and Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Tsongo and Afrikaans in it (with English subtitles when necessary). And we meet a parade of characters who speak those many tongues, with new ones introduced all the way into the third act.

The film’s themes and action beats — even the more far-fetched among them — travel well. It’s a genre thriller telling a near universal story enfolding “state capture” by nefarious, corrupt elements of society and ancient cultural solutions called on when a “murderous, rapist addict is about to become our president.”

People in many African, Asian, Central and South American states, in Hungary or Turkey, Cyprus or South Korea, Israel or the United States could easily find something to identify with in this.

But director Mandla Dube has trouble keeping this picture on its feet and on the move amidst all that narrative clutter, all those characters and the many melodramatic showdowns. It’s a reach-exceeds-its-grasp movie, watchable but cumbersome and slow.

Johnny Klein (Peter Butler) is reaching out to others from his “old life,” especially motorcycle repairman/family man Zuko (Bonko Khoza). Zuko’s wholly domesticated. He’s bought the ring for Malime (Masasa Mbangeni) and is ready to make their family unit — they have a son — permanent.

But wily old Johnny shows up, chased by the Presidential Intelligence Agency, a unit led by chief “Mo” (Molebogang), played by Connie Ferguson. She’s getting threats from her rich, drug-and-women-abusing boss (Sisanda Henna), who knows Johnny has files that could end his presidential election campaign. That’s why Mo’s attack dog agent Tiger (Tim Theron) is hot on Johnny’s tail.

Whatever old ties he figures he’s escaped, Zuko finds himself forced back into that old life, on the lam on a stolen bike to connect those “files” with whoever might be able to expose them, perhaps the chainsmoking, drinking “I’m getting too old for this s—” newspaper reporter Mike (Deon Coetzee) and his plucky intern (Wanda Banda).

There’s a mole inside of the PIA, other government and ex-government actors and a lot of stunning, under-filmed South African scenery for Zuko to be chased over by truck, car and helicopter. There’s an oath to be considered, a “hunter’s” creed that dictates his choice of weapons (spearpoint knives) in his many tangles with the armed men and women out to stop him.

So yes, there’s a lot going on and a number of moving parts stuffed into 105 minutes.

But the narrative — based on a Deon Meyer novel — takes a while to get up and running as lots of information is withheld from the viewer, details that would help us find out footing.

The brawls range from bracing and brutal to obvously stage-punched. All the gunplay has “How does he miss that guy on the motorcycle with a MACHINE gun?” or “How did he bring down that chopper with a PISTOL?” unreality.

Scenes and sequences set up in novel ways but generally pay-off in the most predictable ones.

Khoza, Butler, Theron and gonzo agent Nicole Fortuin have great presence, with Henna reveling in the vileness of his villainous turn.

But “Heart of the Hunter” strains to get out of its own way, a provocative action picture that wants to sprint and can’t stop stumbling and getting distracted all the way from the starting gun to the finish line.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, nudity

Cast: Bonko Khoza, Connie Ferguson, Masasa Mbangeni, Tim Theron, Peter Butler, Nicole Fortuin and Sisanda Henna.

Credits: Directed by Mandla Dube, scripted by Deon Meyer and William Groebler, based on a novel by Deon Meyer. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:46

This festival darling makes its way into release Friday, and it looks to be a hoot and a half.

Released just as the Vietnam War was peaking (1966-67), and shown in repertory houses throughout the late ’60s and early ’70s, “King of Hearts” is the sort of cute, quaint cult film that cannot fully flower out of its own era.

Those years produced “How I Won the War,” “Marat/Sade,” “M*A*S*H,” “Is Paris Burning?” and the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” And while “King of Hearts” isn’t on a par with many of those works, it at least sits comfortably within their company.

With mime/clowning characters straight out of Comedie Francaise, satire built on the madness of war and action that breaks down into ensemble vignettes with a mostly-French “international” cast anchored around Alan Bates, Geneviève Bujold and Adolpho Celi, it is a curiosity, very much an artifact of its age and not without its own broad and campy charms.

Bates, one of the most adventurous leading men of his day, plays a squirelly Scottish ornithologist, carrier pigeon handler and pigeon-fancier ordered to investigate the dangerous goings-on in a town in Northern France just as the Germans are evacuating it near the war’s end, in October of 1918.

The Prussian German officers (screenwriter/actor Daniel Boulanger and Marc Dudicourt) have engineered a surprise for the advancing Brits. They’ve mined their defensive bunker in the town square and wired it to the baroque town town’s knight-bell-striker to blow the whole works up with all the explosives they’re leaving behind.

A local got the word out via a cryptic radio message that the Scottish infantry shouldn’t advance across the bridge and into the town. He also warned his fellow townsmen before the Germans gunned him down.

The French-speaking Private Charles Plumpick (Bates) is ordered in by his Colonel (the Italian character actor Celi, dubbed) to “volunteer” to go in, find this bunker and this agent “Mackeral” and see what the bother is.

Kilted and carrying a beloved pigeon or two, Pumpernick (“That’s PLUMpick, sir!”) finds the place abandoned, save the for the last trigger-happy Germans to retreat, and takes shelter in a gated compound with Asile d’Alienes marking its entrance.

He’s ducked into the “nuthouse.”

When he passes himself off as just another patient to the pursuing Germans, he takes the lead of the patient who goes by “Duke of Clubs” (Jean-Claude Brialy) and calls himself “King of Hearts.” As the Germans leave, the residents there spread out through the town and take on the guise of the doctor, a hair dresser, the madam (Françoise Christophe) and “girls” (Bujold) of the brothel.

Plumpick’s garbled message about the “odd” inhabitants is the only word his pigeons are able to deliver. More Scots will have to reconnoiter as our out-of-his-depth pigeon-handler asks questions of the mentally ill, dashes from his “coronation” ceremony to German bomb-planting and to the brothel and so forth.

They’re all doomed by this murderous plot if he and a lot of people less sane than him cannot figure this out.

Actress, artist, model and ’60s “It” girl, the most famous guise Anita Pallenberg appeared under was “muse.”

She was linked to a lot of people who considered her thus, as she came to embody the mod, swinging “La Dolce Vita” ’60s.

May 3.

The cast is good, the action beats solid and the explosions are epic in the latest French updating of an all-time action classic, “The Wages of Fear.”

But almost everything else about this version ranges from “inferior” to “clumsy” to laughably dumb.

The original 1953 thriller, and the 1977 William Friedkin remake “Sorcerer,” emphasized the “esperation of the men involved in a near-impossible truck transport of volatile nitroglycerin through nearly impassible South American terrain. We’re introduced to their poverty, guess at bits of their guilt-and-despair torn backstories, and understand that they take the job because they have nothing to lose.

This Julian Leclercq (“Sentinelle,” “The Assault”) remake updates the story but botches the introductions, gives the characters affluence and “options,” and waters down the “desperation.”

The setting here is in an Islamic desert state that’s just experienced a coup, and not a poor and backward Latin American country covered in jungle with few decent roads to speak of. Fair enough.

But our prologue shows us more of that coup than we need to see, how a bodyguard, Fred (Franck Gastambide) fails to get his rich and corrupt client out by “boat,” and how once that client is executed by corrupt cops, Fred enlists his married brother Alex (Alban Lenoir) to fetch some explosives from his workplace to help him blow the rich guy’s safe.

“There’s no risk,” Fred assures husband and father Alex, in French with subtitles, or dubbed into English. “Trust me.”

That lands Alex in a Third World prison and creates obligations for “Uncle Fred,” who must look after his brother’s NGO teacher wife and little girl in a fortified oil-well village (population “5000”) in the middle of nowhere.

When “bandits” damage the well, the fire has to be put out to save the villagers. An oil company exec enslists failed-bodyguard and ex-trucker Fred, and bribes Alex out of prison to handle the explosives, which even though “nobody’s used this sort of” volatile nitroglycerin “in 30 years,” is the only thing the oil company honcho (Astrid Whettnall) can think of to do the job.

There are stakes in this set-up, but there’s zero sense of desparation and little “urgency” in this “humanitarian” mission that entails driving a couple of trucks, with armed support vehicles, 500 miles to blow up and snuff out that potentially disastrous well fire. Thirty minutes in, the “ticking clock” is introduced, but rarely re-introduced.

If there’s one myth that dies the hardest about the comedian, writer, dancer, banjo virtuoso and art collector Steve Martin, it’s that he’s “unknowable.”

Shy, “very private,” soft-spoken and guarded in interviews that aren’t chat show performances, he’s let that “philosophy major who does comedy” persona give him an inscrutable air.

But he’s written lots of books and essays, a play that touched on his touchy relationship with his realtor/frustrated actor father, been burned by at least one ex girlfriend (the late Anne Heche) in her memoir, and written his own memoirs — the most recent, a lovely comic book about his hit-and-miss and now-officially “ended” movie career.

So maybe we know what there is to know.

I’ve interviewed the man three or four times, read most of his books and reviewed most of his films and plays and had started to believe that along with being very smart, with an academic ability to dissect comedy, he’s basically just “The Lonely Guy” who may have finally found happiness and contentment with a second marriage and a “comeback” TV series and sold-out series of tours with his pal Martin Short, all coming along after he hit “retirement” age.

That’s what Oscar winning docmentarian Morgan Neville (“Twenty feet from Stardom,” and the Anthony Bourdain doc “Roadrunner”) was up against with his three hours+/two-part film “Steve! (Martin)” for Apple TV.

It’s a dry undertaking, but pointillistic in its attention to detail, more fascinating as history than entertaining as “a million laughs and how I generated them” story. And in it, Martin is never less than utterly charming.

“Ever think you’d be so bored?” by this subject, he asks his off-camera interogator (Neville) at one point.

But Neville, like we and indeed Martin himself, can still marvel at “What an odd life” it’s been, the unlikely stardom that exploded into a cultural phenomenon, overnight, fifteen years into his career and mere days before his “I’ll give this until I’m” thirtieth birthday deadline for “making it.” A half-century in the public eye, and a sudden third act “comeback” that startled everyone, himself included, show us a man at long last at ease with himself and happy in life.

The second half of the series/film is “Now,” catching Martin at 75-76 (he turns 79 in August), biking with his pal and co-star Short through the LA of their careers, testing out material for their act, Martin keeping his late-life child out of the picture as we see the very face of contentment, a very famous man with nothing else to prove who is more likely to stop and chat with strangers if they’re walking their dog.

He calls every dog “buddy.” He tells Jerry Seinfeld that he’s never spoken ill of “other artists,” unlike most of the folks in his profession. He lets us see the adorably funny form letters he long sent to every correspondant. If “Steve!” adds one thing to his rep and his public life resume, it’s that Martin takes pains to be kind.

The first half of the film shows us the “anxious” childhood disconnect from his embittered father, Glenn, landing that first job, as a child, as Disneyland, getting into magic in his tweens and realizing “Oh! They love it when the tricks don’t work!”

He went from being a Carl Ballantine fan from TV to stealing shtick from a Disneyland comic who used balloon animals in his act, to the first urges to try his hand at “conceptual” comedy such as what he’d seen Ernie Kovacs do on late ’50s TV.

Martin studied philosophy at a couple of colleges, learned to dissect jokes and the “tension” behind generating laughter, and eventually settled on gags and jokes where he left out the “release” of the “indicator,” the punch line.

Writing for “The Smothers Brothers” TV show, touring as an opening act for lots of bands, most famously The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, learning ways to get the attention of arena crowds despite how “weird” his act was, and then — August of 1975, it happens. By the time he first hosts “Saturday Night Live,” one year later, he had a hit record, was selling out arenas as a headliner, and had become America’s favorite comic.

He became “the most idolized comedian ever,” Seinfeld marvels, and lets us get just a hint of competitive resentment at that fact. Seinfeld is rich, supremely successful and apparently mellow in his 60s, but is still a great appreciator of The Great Ones, those even he might still envy.

Martin gives Neville access to hours and hours of performance cassettes and written post-mortems where Martin critiqued his work, lamented his years and years of failure and yet kept making discoveries, testing wild notions — taking his early, devoted and still-“small” “audiences out of the club and into McDonald’s, etc.

He’d sit in on call-in shows for wee hours college radio stations, and come off as witty, flirty and hilarious.

Listen to the sound effects — all the bones and cartilege cracking and crunching and what not.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is entirely too old for this s—. Perhaps there’s money in pairing him up with Liam Neeson at some point in the near future.

Shannon Doherty, Emerson Min, STicky Fingaz and Kristanna Loken also star in this May 21 release.

The preview to this June 7 release is enough to make one ponder just what ends a career, or signals the beginning of the end.

Martin Lawrence was old news 20 years ago, infamous on my side of the industry (entertainment journalism) for being one of the bigger wastes of time — rude, self-destructive, an arrogant SOB of limited talent who was the last to get the memo.

Will Smith was always a nice, compliant, press-and-public friendly persona who put the effort into being liked. Until his little performative tirade at the Oscars. As indulged as he was during his many years “owning” summer, and his years chasing an Oscar that always seemed to be just beyond his talents and reach, you had to wonder if the public and the good press would come back.

Kevin Costner’s post “Dances with Wolves” divorce chased off fans. Russell Crowe throwing a phone (isn’t that quaint) caused him to jump the shark long before he let himself go to seed.

Add the public’s fickle attitudes towards stars to the fact that “Bad Boys” seems so…late 80s/90s — and we should be looking at a blockbuster that busts.

And yet this is almost sure to be a smash of the summer. Go figure.

One shouldn’t read too much into the turnout of a late matinee “preview” showing of a potential weekend blockbuster.

But if a movie is showing to roughly three times as many folks as I normally see at a Thursday afternoon “opening” showing in rural Va. (missed the Orlando preview — traveling), that tells me something.

Deadline.com is projecting, based on $10 million in Thursday previews — roughly three times the “solid” opening “norm” for a Thursday — folding into a whopping $31 million Friday, that “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” will manage at least $75 million when the last dime is counted by midnight Easter Monday.

It’s a “cheerfully stupid” and stunning dull affair, and I wasn’t the only one saying so. But kids of all ages love their kaiju. Godzilla sleeping in the Roman Colosseum? That’s adorbs.

The Warner Brothers/Legendary release, another “monsterverse” uniting of the great Hollywood-made monster King Kong and Japan’s lizard king Godzilla, isn’t setting any all time records. But considering how much theaters need customers to tide them over until a post-strike summer season settles in, it’s a godsend.

“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” is quickly displaced from the top spot, falling off a box office cliff (65-70%) on its second weekend — $14-16 million. Easter Sat., Sunday and Monday could give it a boost, unless word is out how lifeless the damned thing is. At least Bill Murray and Annie Potts’ checks cleared, right?

But whatever. One “Empire” replaced by the next “Empire,” and all that. It’ll be in the low $70s, all-in, by midnight Monday, with a solid chance of grinding its way over $100 million.

“Kung Fu Panda 4” should pull in another $10 million+, pushing it over the $150 million mark domestically by Easter night.

That $10-11 million may let it remain ahead of “Dune Part 2,” which should clear $10-11 and thus have tallied over $250 million by the same end of Easter finish line. That’s the blockbuster of the year, so far, but that race for third is by no means decided as of Sat. afternoon, the big day for family movie going with the kids.

Sydney Sweeney as an “Immaculate” nun is still underwhelming, but may make it into the black for Neon, which didn’t spend all that on the “It” girl’s latest. It is “holding” respectably from its middling opening weekend take — another $3 million, maybe less. With a new “Omen” movie slated for release next weekend, that’ll be all she wrote for this one.

As always, I’ll update these figures as more data comes in over the long holiday weekend.

It’s blowing up overseas, too.

The nonsense slides by like lava on a wintry day in “Godzilla v. Kong: The New Empire,” a cheerfully stupid “kaiju” movie that isn’t as interesting as the licensing agreements that put a Hollywood creature feature creation on screen with a Pokemon collection of Japanese ones.

Dan Stevens completes the journey from “Downton Abbey” heartthrob to digital King Kong dentist. BAFTA winner Rebecca Hall classes up the joint as “the Serious Scientist.” And Oscar, Emmy and Tony nominee Brian Tyree Henry makes his first on-screen appearance since “Causeway” (he does voice-over work in the “Spiderverse”) in a movie that’s all about the digital “Titans,” digital titan brawls and a “plot” that isn’t worthy of that label.

“I’m worried about Kong!”

And well you should all should be. The 300 foot fall digital beast is getting white-haired and battle-scarred, holed up in the “Hollow Earth.” There are new challengers among his own kind down below, a scarred ape leading a titanic ape tribe, that scarred ape’s murderously pesky cub lieutenant, and the frosty reptile beast below that they’ve tamed and turned to their Kong-toppling purposes.

Godzilla? He’s above ground, trashing cities — but only by accident, now — as he attacks and neutralizes (Kills? “Absorbs?”) other titans who have crossed-over from Hollow Earth to human dominated Mother Earth.

The big worry is that Kong will return to the surface through a portal — Skull Island or wherever — and that will enrage Godzilla and “Oh no, there goes Tokyo” “again. Or Rome (Godzilla sleeps in the even-more-ruined Colosseum). Or Rio. Or wherever the kaiju roam.

“You can’t be serious,” might be the funniest line among many uttered by the scientist turned single-mom (she adopted the deaf Hollow Earth tribal child Jia — Kaylee Hottle), the conspiracy buff podcaster (Henry) and the surfer dude/kaiju expert and dentist.

The film is the least Japanese “Godzilla” movie ever, which is fine, since an Oscar-winning incarnation of that creature came out at the end of last year. The lizard king is a supporting player in this Kong-centric big critter combat film.

There’s fan service (pandering) in the jokey tone, the parade of classic pop/rock hits decorating the score — “I Was Made for Loving You” (Kiss), “Twilight Zone” (Golden Earring), “Turn Me Loose” (Loverboy) and of course, the obligatory bit of Badfinger.

But is there a movie in all of this Godzilla, Kong and kaiju-on-parade business? Not much of one.

It’s a lighthearted spectacle, but so disconnected from reality, narrative and human emotions that there’s almost nothing to it.

The effects are decent but not Oscar worthy, the way they were in “Godzilla Minus One.” And the only thing we’re expected to care about is whether Kong can survive retirement, which has to be on his mind every time he looks into a lake and sees the wrinkles, scars and white whiskers that should tell him he’s getting too old for this s—.

Rating: PG-13, “creature violence”

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Brian Tyree Henry, Alex Ferns and Kaylee Hottle

Credits: Adam Wingard, scripted by Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett and Jeremy Slater. A Warner Bros. release.

Running time: 1:55