Movie Nation

A hometown hero, the Samson of Rajavaram, who only needs to don his white shirt to lay waste to all who would brawl with him, sees his love of that town put to the test in “Rangabali,” a soap operatic Indian fable with music.

But after it bounces out of the gate with spirited fights and an epic production number stuffed into a packed first act, this once-jaunty “RRR Lite” withers like a mango left in the sun.

A star vehicle for Teualu actor Naga Shaurya (“Aswathama” was a recent success), it’s only when this Pawan Basamsetti film abandons its Bollywood excesses — epic song and dance numbers, slo-mo brawls, hair and sarees and shirts billowing in the omni-present slo-mo breeze, a big seduction dance — that the picture grinds to a halt and tests one’s patience.

It’s only 135 minutes long, short by Indian cinema standards. But going an hour between dances just kills it.

That winning first act sees the kid who loved attention and fighting from childhood so much that he was nicknamed “Show” grow up be the go-to guy when his town’s statue to Lord Ganpati is about to be removed by a rival town’s ruffians.

He gets up from his nap, stops by the laundry to pick up a fresh white shirt, and slo-mo head-butts, crotch-kicks and haymakers his way through a sea of men in black…with orange headbands.

How does one celebrate that victory? With a huge drum-corps production number, of course.

Show’s a big deal in town, close-pals with with his local MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly), Parasuram (Shine Tom Chacko). But he needs to pilfer from his father’s pharmacy to have the cash to entertain his friends because he never went to pharmacist school.

He’d rather mix drinks than prescribe pills.

As our Samson realized long ago that his power, influence and indeed his very physical strength derives from his hometown, he’s very reluctant to travel to the city and get that degree.

“The crocodile is stronger under water. But when he comes out, people throw stones at him!”

But he leaves, and once there, accompanied by his sadistic bestie Agadam (Satya), who only derives pleasure from others’ failures, injuries and misfortunes, he is promptly distracted by the fetching doctor-to-be Sahaja (Yukti Thareja).

He puts on the moves, gets as far as asking her father (Murli Sharma) for her hand, only to discover that the wealthy dad has bad memories of his village, so “no marrying my daughter.”

Show must go home and “fix” this little problem.

The movie throws its big romantic/erotic dance duet AFTER a long dead stretch of “college” and other filler scenes of no consequence and after he’s been turned down by the father yet promised his love he will make things right.

That delay took me right out of the movie.

Director Basamsetti and his comic leads know that comedy is a genre that works best at great speed. The prattling banter and one-liners fly by at a sprint. Characters are self-aware of the absurdities going on, not quite calling attention to the ever-present fans off-camera that never seem to disturb Show’s aircraft carrier helmet of hair, but joking about other conventions of the cinema.

“What’s with that look?” (in Tegulu, with subtitles) “It’s as if you’re carrying a terrible FLASHback!”

What “Rangabali” needed is more dancing, more brawling and a romance that throws the traditional courtship/seduction duets at us a lot sooner.

The flashback that explains the film’s title and the difficulty of the quest Show has taken on, salving egos over the infamous name of the town civic center, is cute and gory.

But getting to that moment is a slog, and everything that follows is either nonsensical, dull or both.

Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Naga Shaurya, Yukti Thareja, Satya and Shine Tom Chacko

Credits: Scripted and directed by Pawan Basamsetti. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:15

Georgie vacuums her rowhouse, arranges the pillows on the sofa just so, photographs it just to make sure she’s doing it right, then dashes out the door to “work.”

Her taller, slightly-older mate Ali joins her as they bounce around suburban Chigwell, Essex (NE London), drifting from bike rack to bike rack. He keeps a look-out, she picks the locks.

They’re not Italians, but they’re definitely bicycle thieves. And when they’re caught, Georgie is the one who launches into the long, absurd lie about “maintenance” and “greasing the bearings” in her best “Please sir, can I have some more?” voice, so that some adults will be charmed and others — who know them — just ready to shrug it off.

Georgie does the “adult” to adult (Ambreen Razia) haggling with the used bike shop owner they sell their loot to, mentioning how the “Tour de France is coming up” and how that’ll make “all the kids want bikes.”

But Georgie is all of 12 years old. She’s living alone, and as a montage of neighbors, teachers and peers (mock) interviewed about her in “Scrapper” point out, she’s “handling” her “grief” very well. Or so it appears.

For her debut feature film, writer-director Charlotte Regan has conjured up her version of a child on her own, opening the film with the famous “It takes a village to raise a child” quote, which Georgie strikes out with an “I can raise myself, thanks.”

“Scrapper” follows Georgie in the weeks just after her mother’s death in a tale told with straight narrative, fantasy flashbacks, cell phone videos of Mum and a smattering of mockumentary as one and all ironically comment on how “she’s handling it.”

Because maybe she is, and that one soulless teacher (Cary Crankston, as amusing as his name) is right when he blusters one just needs “a morning,” not even a whole day to “mourn.” But maybe she’s not doing all that well after all.

There’s a whiff of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” to this Brit-film, a proper English working class child Artful Dodgering her way towards her 13th birthday. But there’s less “magical realism” and more wish fulfillment fantasy (How Social Services or the cops haven’t gotten wise to her is explained, but not believable) to this sentimental story set (loosely) against the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief.

Georgie, played with pluck and a subtitle-thick accent by newcomer Lola Campbell, gives all appearances of having it all together. It’s just after the school year, and she and Ali (Alin Azun) have nothing but time for sleep-overs and bike thieving, horsing around and contriving ways to fool adults who keep calling to check on her.

She gets a clerk at her local market to read lines into her phone’s voice recorder, as if she’s copying “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Maybe that’s just her director.

“Georgie’s doing great at school! We’re fine!”

That’s supposed to be her Uncle “Winston,” talking — Uncle Winston Churchill. Cough cough.

And then this bleached-blond stranger shows up at her door. “Jason” (Harris Dickinson) is her “Dad,” he says. She hasn’t seen him for a dozen years (a flash of recollected images of the hair, a necklace, is all she can summon up). And now he’s here to raise her.

“Get lost” is the nicest comeback she can come up with. Once she hears he’s been in Spain, playing soccer (“Is that a proper job for a 30 year old?”) and not an ex-con or vampire, it’s game-on. She will push him away, lock him out (literally), do whatever it takes to ditch this new alleged “adult” in her life.

“You never thought that leaving someone to raise a child on their own was a bit selfish?”

Jason, being as childish as Georgie, gives as good as he gets;

“I ain’t surprised no one’s stuck around for you…Remember, I can tell ‘Social’ any time I want, so drop the attitude, yeah?”

This “Scrapper” is facing her biggest scrap.

Regan’s script cleverly lets us hear children parrot back what she’s heard from adults about “stages” of grieving — “I’m almost finished stage three or four!”

And she does a great job of showing the arrested development that many athletes live under while they’re still playing the game.

“Scrapper” tends towards the cute in its latter acts, so anybody expecting a hard, realistic edge here will be as disappointed as anyone waiting the the tetanus attack to take down the barefoot Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) in “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

But thanks to Regan’s direction, Lola Campbell gives a master class in deflection, misdirection and impishly lying on-the-fly as Georgie. And as she isn’t running for office or drawing a paycheck from Rupert Murdoch, that’s damned adorable.

Rating: unrated, some violence, tween thefts, profanity

Cast: Lola Campbell, Harris Dickinson, Alin Azun and Ambreen Razia

Credits: Scripted and directed by Charlotte Regan. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:24

Kids growing up in the ’60s found themselves a little shocked whenever some late night movie show on TV broadcast “Double Indemnity,” “The Caine Mutiny,” or anything starring TV dad and Disney comedy star Fred MacMurray playing a heavy.

He had a long career, and parlayed his stardom into investments that made him filthy rich. But it was still a a bit of a jaw-dropper to remember the befuddled looks and stammering and exasperation of his later roles — “My Three Sons,” “Son of Flubber,” “Kisses for My President” — had replaced steely glares and stacatto, film noir dialogue in roles that often used him as a cynical schemer.

MacMurray didn’t have that classic, sharp-edge stacatto of William Powell, Bogie and their ilk. But he could bowl through a line so fast you’d swear he was paid for how many words he could squeeze into 15 seconds of screen time. Here’s a blast from “Borderline,” his on-the-lam comic-thriller co-starring Claire Trevor.

“Looking for somebody?”

“No. Only the police, the Mexican federal men, Uncle Sam, several assorted hijackers and Pete Richey!”

This 1950 production is a chase through late ’40s Mexico, with Trevor’s Gladys Larue and MacMurray’s Johnny Macklin smuggling drugs in a big music box and the bottom of a parrot cage to contacts in sunny Southern California.

The film isn’t all that. But it’s more than a little reminiscent of Don Siegel’s far-better and darker “The Big Steal,” which starred Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer and released just a year before. And Trevor’s plucky and fun.

There’s historical value in seeing how much Spanish your average Angelino or the Gringo audience at large could speak or understand in a pinch, even then, when hustling South of the Border, and seeing Trevor literally elbow her way through the menfolk trying to talk over her, dismiss her and discount her contribution to their enterprise is a hoot.

That “enterprise” is a pre-DEA Federal drug enforcement team that lets an LAPD lass with WWII OSS (pre-CIA) experience talk herself into an undercover operation to catch some American crime Mr. Big, who runs his (heroin, apparently) operation from Mexico.

Director William A. Seiter got his start in the silents and went on to make “Belle of the Yukon” and “Allegheny Uprising” among his 150 or so credits. He presided over a Universal production that could look a tad under-designed. But when Trevor, as Madeleine Haley (her character’s “real” name) blurts out suggestions like “Why not a woman?” and the like, which the state, local and federal men she’s trying to tell how to take down “ladies’ man” Pete Richie stumble around until they think it was THEIR idea all along, Seiter shows he knows how to make a violent thriller funny.

The men bicker over her looks, right to her face.

“Naaah, Richey goes for tawdry, cheap-looking dames!” “She could pass!”

“She speaks pretty good Mexican!” her supervisor tells the Feds, and that seals the deal.

The plot parks “Gladys Larue” in a port city (Puerto Vallarta, maybe?) cantina chorus line, where she tries to keep up (no prob) and throw herself at the dark mug Pete Richie in a white suit, played by Raymond Burr. He’s not interested. It’s not until Richie gets a little rough with her that she and we realize she’s maybe got a shot with this “ladies’ man.”

She’s just photographed the guy’s contact list, after getting his top lieutenant good and drunk, when Richey’s plans are foiled by the two-fisted, torturing Johnny Macklin (MacMurray). He’s taking the drugs, for a bigger boss. He’ll get them across the border. The dame?

“Married couples” draw less suspicion.

The cross-country odyssey is dusty, fraught and peppered with Southern Cal locations doubling for Mexico and populated with Hollywood Mexicans — José Torvay, Nacho Galindo and Pepe Hern among them.

Burr makes a great heavy, as always, and renders cheesy threats like “I hope you haven’t got a good reason to live” credible.

MacMurray’s gift for screen sarcasm served him well in more serious parts.

“Forgot to tell you, I can also keep my mouth shut in two langauges!”

The picture gives away that his character is also in law enforcement far too early, and the few bursts of action make you wish they’d jammed in a little more.

But Trevor — of “Key Largo,” “Murder My Sweet” — makes this middling programmer worth watching, playing a character who is discounted, time and again because of her gender, but who always knows when to pull the trigger on that pistol she keeps in her tiny clutch, always seems to be passively “along for the ride” while actively saving their bacon, underestimated right to the end. Trevor would act will into the 1980s.

A bit more shooting and chasing and a little more style bechind the camera and “Borderline” could have crossed over “marginal” and into a near-noir that we’d consider part of the canon.

As it is, it’s the sort of movie that would tip MacMurray off that pictures like this weren’t going to tear Americans away from their TVs. He’d hit a last high water mark with “The Caine Mutiny” before picking up a pipe and widower’s sweater to finish his career in the comedies Golden Age Hollywood rarely let him tackle.

Rating: “approved,” violence, drug content

Case: Claire Trevor, Fred MacMurray, José Torvay, Nacho Galindo, Roy Roberts, Pepe Hern and Raymond Burr

Credits: Directed by William A. Seiter, scripted by Devery Freeman. A Universal release on Tubi, Youtube, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:31

On December 17, 2010, a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire, in protest, and changed the Arab world. Mohamed Bouazizi’s desperate, despairing act started the Arab Spring, which didn’t quite upend the socio-political order of the Islamic Middle East and North Africa. But it gave people there hope, even if that turned to ashes in hellish dictatorships like Syria.

“Ashkal: The Tunisian Investigation” is a grim and cryptic parable about the return of self-immolation in the country where they re-emerged as protests. But the police are baffled as to motive this time around, and just who is “inspiring” these ultimate acts of self-destruction.

And as a new government and a long-delayed high-end/high-rise housing development tries to sweep these incidents under the rug with a hasty “case closed,” a lone cop (Fatma Oussaifi) seeks to piece together the puzzle, and tries to convince just one person — her partner (Mohamed Grayaâ) — that there’s a connection. And it just might be supernatural.

A “witch” or a “sorceror” is “manipulating” lower level employees of the Carthage Gardens complex to torch themselves? He’s not buying it. Will we?

Director Youssef Chebbi (“Black Medusa” was his) keeps the viewer in the dark, literally and figuratively — setting much of the story at night, not showing his cards, not even telling us who Fatma the cop’s controversial father was (Some sort of regime-disrupting reformer?). That’s a big reason other police and the sketchy manager of the revived construction project (Nabil Trabelsi) distrust and despise her, with the manager insisting the first burn victim, a watchman in the “wastelands” of these unfinished towers ,”was depressed” (in Arabic with English subtitles), the second — a young maid, “raped and burned” to cover up the crime.

Fatma isn’t buying it.

The victims don’t scream. They don’t leave notes, listing their despair, their demands or whatever. And the fire that they “surrender” to doesn’t appear to be lit by natural or chemical means. There might be a cowled, masked stranger luring these people to their doom.

As an “Investigation,” “Ashkal” leaves questions unanswered, allowing us to speculate on what’s happening. The symbolism of a high-end building project starting up again in a country which impoverished people are fleeing, along with climate and conflict refugees from the rest of Africa, isn’t lost in the mystery.

Then there’s the fact that we glimpse hearings of a “Truth and Dignity” commission, airing the nation’s shame that led to so many arrested and tortured or killed citizens by earlier regimes.

Chebbi uses his burning-human fire effect in darkness to chilling effect, and his set — vast unfinished acres of towering, empty buildings — is a Kafka/Pirandello manipulation of existing emptiness twisted into something sinister the way Orson Welles used an abandoned Paris train station to give us his Kafka-esque nightmare, “The Trial.”

The bright, flickering light of another sacrifice sends Fatma racing through the darkness, scrambling up flights of exposed stairs, her flashlight’s dance the one way we can track her progress in the distance.

Usually I like a few more answers before endorsing a mystery like this one, no matter how striking it sometimes is. The “villain” here might be “the system,” which only new protests can displace. Those are manifested in the mysterious fire-starter (we never see fires start) who could be a symbol, a villain, or the conscious of the nation.

But in any event, “Ashkal” manages to pique our interest and burn itself into the memory by being one of the most opaque horror thrillers to come along, one from a part of the world better known for real challenges and horrors, not ones faked for the movies.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Fatma Oussaifi, Mohamed Grayaâ, Hichem Riahi, Bahri Rahali and Nabil Trabelsi

Credits: Directed by Youssef Chebbi, scripted by Youssef Chebbi, François-Michel Allegrini . A Yellow Veil release.

Running time: 1:32

This supernatural thriller about someone or someTHING manipulating Tunisians into setting themselves on fire looks creepy, and the unusual setting gives it bonus points.

Look for “Ashkal” on Friday.

“Dead Shot” is a lean, myopic thriller that remembers the IRA wars against UK “paras” and special units as tit-for-tat violence that couldn’t help but turn “personal.”

Set against the IRA London bombing campaign of 1975, it enfolds dueling personal vendettas — the IRA gunman (Colin Morgan of “Belfast”) who wants to kill the re-assigned soldier who murdered his pregnant girlfriend, and that soldier (Aml Ameen of “Till Death”), now in an extra-legal anti-terror squad taking down IRA cells by any means necessary, wants to “finish the job” with that terrorist.

It begins with Michael O’Hara making a frantic dash into South Armagh to fetch a very-pregnant Carol (Máiréad Tyers) and get her to the hospital. Her house is being watched. When he stops the car to make his escape, she is killed by Sgt. Tempest in what was almost an accident.

“You are about to be prosecuted for murder,” the mysterious plainclothesman Holland (Mark Strong, of course) tells him. Unless, of course, you come “work for me.” “Number 10’s had enough,” and he can use a “dead shot” like Tempest in his “fight back on their terms” anti-terror squad.

There’s a really good “Oh come on” moment that could take you right out of this movie right in that opening act. We see Michael O’Hara fired upon by several soldiers and hit when he storms back to shoot at the men who murdered his girlfriend. But somehow, he gets away.

He’s told “There is another way” by the couple who take him in and nurse him back to health.

“There was,” he says, remembering his promise to “get out.” “Not any more.”

He’s off to London with orders to join a bombing cell there, and a chance to avenge himself on the man who murdered his beloved Carol and their baby.

Felicity Jones plays an IRA scout/photographer/messenger in London. Sophia Brown plays Tempest’s shopkeeper/back-up singer girlfriend, the first “target” in vengeful O’Hara’s sites. Tom Vaughan-Taylor plays a ruthless IRA officer and Dara Devaney an accomplice Michael will need to get his revenge.

Co-writer/directors Charles and Thomas Guard (Ronan Bennett also contributed to the script) stage the action beats with skill and do a decent job of maintaining suspense. And the production does a grand job of recreating the mid-70s gloom, grunge and violence of Northern Ireland and London.

The performances are bowstring-tight and the story marches by in double-time.

But there’s an over-familiarity to the themes and a willingness to seemingly take sides that doesn’t seem to fit the material.

And that “How’d he escape” boner in the first act is bookended by a “There’s a rooftop sniper and nobody’s running” shooting in the last act.

Aside from that, “Dead Shot” is more or less on target, a B-thriller that does what you hope and expect one to do, especially considering this subject matter.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, profanity, smoking

Cast: Aml Ameen, Colin Morgan, Sophia Brown, Tom Vaughan-Taylor, Dara Devaney, Felicity Jones and Mark Strong.

Credits: Directed by Charles Guard and Thomas Guard, scripted by Thomas Guard, Charles Guard and Ronan Bennett. A Quiver release.

Running time: 1:31′

A profane, all-star stoner comedy about talking/insulting/swearing pooches is the very definition of a sleeper-wannabe hit for the “Dog Days” of August.

I chuckled at the trailer. Let’s see if this delivers. “Strays” opens Friday.

“The Murderer” is a comical Thai whodunit featuring grisly (ish) deaths, goofy, conflicting versions of how they occurred and a grumpy senior cop nicknamed “The Hot-Headed Crime Buster” who tries to sort out the truth from the conclusions he’s more than happy to jump to.

Subtle? Oh no. Amusing? Every now and then.

The Abishek J. Bajaj script mocks Thai superstition and sends up pan-Asian xenophobia about “white people” and “white men” in particular.

Every Thai in this dark comedy (subtitled, or dubbed) throws around that word “farang,” a catch-all term for “white” that can be narrowed to “white man” when you’re talking about Thai women and their “sugar daddies.”

“In the West, we have Social Security,” one plump American farang, Charlie (Jonathan Samson) explains to a Brit (James Laver). “Here, they have ‘farangs.'”

A mass murder has occurred out in the countryside, seven people killed in and around a remote farmhouse. Clumsy, ill-tempered and prejudiced Major Nawat Banluecha (“Ong-bak” alumnus Phetthai Vongkumlao, funny) is in a fury to pin them all on a farang (Laver) that they have in custody.

But Earl’s petite Thai wife, Sai (Eisaya Hosuwan) insists “Earl could not have done that.”

Then what happened? Accidents? Another killer? Demonic possession?

“It’s like that film, ‘Chucky,'” Sai suggests. “Ever see it?”

“Yeah. SCARY.”

And so we wander through conflicting versions of the events of that evening, which ended with seven victims, including the first cop on the scene.

Sai and Earl have their tales. Major Hot-Head barks out his speculations, all of them depicted here.

A child also survived, and she gets to hear how the major got that scar on his head (luridly acted-out in a flashback that riffs on traditional Thai theater) before telling her version of the events of that dark and stormy night.

The killings– never-quite-amusing– could be a sinister plot to cash in on a fresh insurance policy, a series of gruesome accidents, or…something else?

It’s all played broadly enough to feel funny (ish) even when it isn’t. But the pacing is off, and the mystery-solving takes precedence over the comedy, leaving us with a puzzle that might be solved but lacking enough laughs to hold one’s interest for 90 minutes, much less 124.

Rating: TV-MA, bloody deaths, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Phetthai Vongkumlao, Eisaya Hosuwan, James Laver, Sampong Chaptham, Sawanee Utoomma, Jonanthan Samson and Kuanruean Lohgkad

Credits: Directed by Wisit Sasanatieng, scripted by Abishek J. Bajaj. A Neflix release.

Running time: 2:04

Very bad and interminably long, “Storage Locker” brings together a perfect storm of terrible script, inept acting and cheese-puff (as opposed to the more expensive “cheese ball”) effects.

It’s about a nerdy comic book collector (Avery Mayo) who gets mixed up with rich witches (Meredyth Fowler, Bobbie Grace) who own a storage unit lot and draw him into their nerfarious plans.

Grave robbing, murders, an assassination attempt, supernatural incantations — “I’m a WITCH, not a freakin’ doctor!” — parties that round up rich weirdo “collectors” to bid on sick and twisted collections, a slasher “monster” who seems like a cowled child in need of a haircut, none of it forms into a coherent plot and all of it is buried under bad dialogue badly-delivered.

“Ya’ll need to go so crazy someplace else!”

It takes 30 minutes to get going and another 80 to go nowhere — slowly. Collector Packer gets mugged, his fiance dumps him for losing their honeymoon money, the weird sisters require bribes to rent him a lousy storage unit and this cowled killer kid keeps dashing around the storage units, the parking lot, parties, etc, slashing at people.

And then he isn’t a kid.

I kept think of that Frank Zappa song about cut-rate monster movies — “Cheapnis.”

It’d be mean to single out any one performance, any directorial flourish, any half-assed take that somehow made it into the finished film.

You can tell how close to a student film this amateurish fiasco is by the worst black-eye makeup I’ve ever seen in a movie, Packer’s prize for getting mugged trying to buy a rare “spider” comic book.

At least they knew better than to call him “Spider-Man.” No sense getting sued over this.

Rating: unrated, bloody violence.

Cast: Avery Mayo, Meredyth Fowler, Bobbie Grace, Skeeta Jenkins, David Vidal Trevino and Allen Danziger.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ray Spivey. A Freestyle release.

Running time: 1:53

This Silver Bear winner from the Berlin Film Fest takes us back to 1960s Indonesia for a sultry tale of infidelity and the secrets women keep from each other and their men.

A lot more Indonesian cinema is making its way abroad thanks to Netflix. But the good stuff goes to Film Movement, with “Before, Now & Then” slated for Aug. 25 release.