Movie Nation

The old joke that “Assault rifles are for gangsters, and rednecks too lazy to learn to shoot” comes to mind when sitting through the mayhem of “White Elephant,” a cop-hunted-by-hitmen thriller starring a lot of old-in-the-tooth action stars.

This unfortunately-timed bodycount features Bruce Willis, who has to have half his lines dubbed or looped, Eugenio Derbez’s handsome and wooden-as-a-Sequoia son, Tifton, Georgia substituting for the Southwest border country and almost zero non-corrupt police presence evident as larger and larger teams of tac-geared hired killers come after “clean cop” Olga Kurylenko –– and miss.

Seems about right.

Michael Rooker stars as a veteran hired killer with a pretty boy protege (Vadhir Derbez), a mob lawyer (John Malkovich) go-between, an impatient mob boss (Willis) and a dead wife whom he broods over, all the way through the movie.

A gang war involving that boss, the Mexican mafia and “The Russians” is breaking out, and the hitmen find themselves having to “clean up” two cops (Michael Rose and Kurylenko) who saw the sniper school-trained (and tattooed) Carlos (Derbez) after a murder.

She proves to be pretty hard to take out.

Malkovich is here to give Rooker a little lecture on ancient Greek justice. Willis is here to give orders — sometimes in his own voice — “Put a bullet in that b—-‘s head or I’ll put one in yours.“

To be fair, he apologizes when Rooker’s character softly demands it. Yeah, “White Elephant” is stupid that way.

And Derbez, playing kind of killer who dresses too flashy to not be noticed and wears his sunglasses into dark houses on night assassinations, is spot-on in one regard — reminding us in almost every scene that he hasn’t the “earned” presence, the skills or the screen charisma to hold his own with the likes of these folks.

Judging from the inane script, the unhurried direction by stuntman-turned-director Jesse V. Johnson, and by the destruction wrought when machine guns tear up cars, houses and people (nothing graphic enough to be “honest), it’s obvious that the budget here went to actors and ordinance.

Rating: Unrated, graphic violence.

Cast: Michael Rooker, Olga Kurylenko, John Malkovich, Vadhir Derbez and Bruce Willis.

Credits: Directed by Jesse V. Johnson, scripted by Jesse V. Johnson, Erik Martinez and Katherine Lee McEwan. An RLJE release.

Running time: 1:32

An iconic tune’s tortured journey to fame, a songwriter’s ticket to immortality.

As dying-man’s-last-road trip dramas go, “Hole in the Wall (Gat in Die Muur)” has more “hole” than “wall.”

Dull, uninvolving and downright off-putting in the story it tells and the way that it tells it, “Wall” doesn’t make sense until you consider that its star co-directed it. It’s a dubious star vehicle and something of a head-scratcher, even after we realize that.

Rian, played by veteran character actor Andre Odendaal (who shares his name with a famous South African cricketer and historian,), is something of a physical wreck. He’s getting oxygen and still smoking, well past his prime and yet somehow catnip to the ladies.

An impulsive, demanding sixtysomething, his ex-wife’s description of him seems to fit — “a selfish, very charming, clever pedigreed as—-e.”

We catch up with Rian as he’s acting on two impulses. He’s paid a beautiful and seemingly-charmed young woman, Ava (Tinarie van Wyk Loots) to drive him on a month-long road trip. And he’s “urgently” summoned his estranged son from college, Ben (Nicholas Campbell), to “interrupt my life” for this trip of unspecified purpose, indeterminate length or destination.

There’s nothing for it but for Ben to comply, and they’re off — Ava driving, Ben sullen and sulking, Rian complaining about their silence.

We’ve guessed it before anybody admits it. Rian is dying, “stage four,” all of that. What he’s brought them along on this trip for is to “find out why you’re here,” on Earth, living this life.

That’s what he tells Ben, anyway. Ava is “an angel,” and seriously sexy. Is she here for Rian, or for the kid to fall in love with? An old friend asks Rian if she’s Ben’s “girlfriend.”

“Not yet.”

Our “Around the World with Netflix” trek takes us along the scenic, rugged coast of South Africa, with the icy Southern Ocean washing up on it and Black South Africans apparently priced out of even spending time there. A plainly shoehorned-in and under-explained connection between Rian and a Black family turns up in the third act, allowing the white folk a chance to experience a traditional Black South African wedding, and Rian to both order them around, and seem generous because apparently he’s left them property.

Like the only other Black face in the movie, they’re former servants of his.

Father and son have some issues to work out, which are perfunctorily handled. The kid doesn’t weep at Dad’s bad news, and only tires of his father’s spontaneity and irresponsibility long after the viewer has. Rian has another “secret,” which is introduced and abandoned with a plop.

Rian stumbles into a much younger woman in a public restroom, and the movie suggests this is a sexy and flirtatious moment. Nah. It’s creepy as hell.

We see little evidence of the character’s “charm” — just see others responding as if they’ve been charmed by something that would irk the average Jack or Jill. Grabbing an armful of junk foot and trotting back out to the SUV, only (over) paying when the store proprietress protests, etc.

The film’s general ineptitude is exemplified by sending our travelers to a seaside Elvis-tribute “Graceland” inn, only to do pretty much nothing sweet, cute, funny or Elvisy with it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I never bought into the Dad’s “larger than life” status, his “charming” label or apparent sex appeal. The dying man’s story arc is ill-defined and the “growing” by one and all wouldn’t seem justified if there was any evidence of it to begin with.

But hey, the scenery’s nice.

Rating: TV-MA, sex, constant smoking, profanity

Cast: Andre Odendaal, Tinarie van Wyk Loots, Nicholas Campbell, Bheki Mkhwane and Anna Davel

Credits: Directed by Andre Odendaal and Johan Vorster, scripted by Susan Coetzer. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44

By “Bridgerton” I mean the color blind casting that compensates for history and literature’s erasure of people of color from the Napoleonic Era and Britain on the cusp of the 18th century.

The Shonda Rhimes sex and plenty of it element may be missing. It’s ever so PG.

Freida Pinto, Sope Dirisu, Naoko Mori, Divian Ladwa and Theo James are among the players of many races and ethnicities who tell this story.

A hit novel comes to the screen. Soon.

Here’s all you need to know about this ever-so-slight teen romance from Mexico, “Anonymously Yours.”

It’s all about how two kids meet by mistake via texts, and decide to keep their “relationship” secret — “No personal information, no pictures, no clues,” (in Spanish with subtitles, or dubbed into English). They don’t even realize that they’re in high school detention together, grudgingly forced to do “the kind of honest (manual labor projects) that your privilege makes you think is beneath you,” people who don’t like each other who gradually get to know one another.

At some point they have to figure out that this secret “relationship” they’ve developed via text is actually aspiring filmmaker Valeria (Annie Cabello) and scholarship loner Alex (Marco Antonio Morales de la Peña), right? For good or ill, that’s got to come out by the rules of rom-coms.

Alas, director and co-writer Maria Torres (“This is Tomas”) absolutely blows this Big Moment. It barely manages a sputter, and hardly even merits a mention.

So the cute stuff about a tony, high-end high school and its tolerance — the cute lesbian couple (Estefi Merelles, Alicia Vélez) who’re friends with our two “anonymous” flirters, the business with Vale’s “films” and her efforts to convince her elevator business family to let her go to film school, Alex’s loneliness since his martial arts loving dad died — all that’s wasted.

A timid, limp noodle of a teen romance doesn’t do all that much to build up to its big moment, blows the big moment, and that’s that.

They meet in the dead of night. Some girl gave him the wrong number, and they start texting.

She’s struggling in school, distracted by the cinema and her passion to work in it. He’s alone in a new school.

“I don’t want to get to know them, or them to get to know me.”

Two disaffected kids find each other by accident, only decide to keep their digital distance.

And then detention gets in the way — mouthy and rude Vale, picked-on-and-fights-back Alex tied together gardening and painting the school for an hour each day.

Still texting, but now they’re trying hard to get around revealing the fact that they’re running into this cute member of the opposite sex in detention, at parties, etc.

The leads are more attractive than affecting. The romance is lukewarm at best, more middle school chaste than high school hot.

There’s nothing here that would hold your average adult’s attention for more than a few minutes. Kids? Maybe it’ll seem new enough and relatable to them.

But any 100 minute movie with 40 minutes of story, one that blows the romance pretty much entirely and takes a dive in its big moment, is something even teens will outgrow before the closing credits.

Rating: TV-14, teen drinking, profanity

Cast: Annie Cabello, Marco Antonio Morales de la Peña, Estefi Merelles, Alicia Vélez and Harold Azuara.

Credits: Directed by Maria Torres, scripted by Alexandro Aldrete, Daniela Gómez and Maria Torres. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:40

Forget the cop-out of an anti-climax that the makers of “The Policeman’s Lineage” insisted upon, and you’ve got a decent thriller built around the struggle for a young Korean cop’s soul.

Director Lee Kyu-maan and screenwriter Bae Young-Ik set up Choi Woo-sik of “Okja” and the Oscar-winning “Parasite” as Choi, scrupulous young third generation cop trapped between two feuding superiors, each apparently worse than or at least as unethical as the other.

As one is the celebrated Det. Park, played by Cho Jin-woong of “The Handmaiden,” famous for his network of “informers” and the busts that result from them, and the other is the Internal Affairs Chief Ho (Park Hee-soon of “1987: When the Day Comes”), who sent Choi undercover to find the dirt on Park, you see the kid’s dilemma.

Add in the fact that Park was there the day Choi’s cop-dad was killed, and there are all these feelings, summed up in flashbacks to that fateful day and Choi’s cop-worshipping youth, to consider.

Even though Choi was chosen for this job thanks to his turning in and testifying against an older cop fond of torturing suspects, Park’s elite squad takes him in and Park makes the kid his driver.

What’s the wily older cop’s play here? Is he keeping somebody he should beware of close to him to monitor the new guy’s activities? Is he that careless? Or is he merely guileless because his heart is pure?

Ho is obsessed with getting his man, a “dirty cop” who is “a tumor who must be removed with a scalpel.” Ho isn’t shy about taking shortcuts to “justice” either.

But when we see Choi driving Park around in his big Mercedes, takes a look around the detective chief’s swank apartment filled with designer Gucci and Burberry fashions, and gets to ride on the boss’s big fishing boat, he and we have to wonder if Ho is right on the money.

“I knew your father” carries some weight. And Park’s reasoning — playing the big shot so that he can get close to the rich mobsters he’s pursuing (Kwon Yul and Park Myeong-hoon) –seems sound.

“We have to meet them to catch them,” he rationalizes (in Korean with English subtitles). Exclusive poker games and the like back that up.

But who is playing whom here?

The players are in fine form here, with Cho poker-faced and Choi letting us see his character’s nerves. The villains are loud and vile, and are in barely enough scenes to stand out.

Crime-film specialist Lee (“Child…”) gets our heroes and villains into some awful tussles even as the clues that point the viewer to conclusions that Choi takes forever to catch up to.

I sensed an imbalance to the screenplay, a need to build up Ho and suggest more of a tug-of-war over Choi’s loyalties and future than the film delivers. A couple of scenes show Ho’s obsession. A couple more would have helped.

And then there’s the whole “cop-out” “anticlimax” thing that takes the sting out of the finale. Boo!

Up until then, though, this is a tense, sometimes exciting police procedural dirty-cop hunt that works, that maintains some of its mystery and delivers righteous violence in just the right doses.

Rating: Unrated, violence, drug content

Cast: Cho Jin-woong, Choi Woo-sik, Hee-soon Park, Kwon Yul and Park Myeong-hoon

Credits: Directed by Lee Kyu-maan, scripted by Bae Young-Ik An Echelon release, available for sale or streaming June 7.

Running time: 1:59

Tom Cruise’s biggest opening weekend ever proves that there was pent up demand for that “Top Gun” sequel, no matter how much time has passed or how middling the first movie was.

Tuesday and Thursday previews rolled into Friday has “Maverick” at almost $52 million heading into Sat. showings.

Paramount is saying it’ll do $123 or so Fri-thru-Sunday, and Memorial Day Monday will take it over $150.

But what about “Bob’s Burgers,” you say, animation but not necessarily for kids? A $5.7 million Friday points to a $19 million holiday weekend for Twentieth Century pictures.

“Doctor Strange” had a middling $4-5 million Friday and won’t hit $20 this weekend. Finally.

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” continues to hold audience and add to its status as the biggest hit A24 has ever released. Another $3.1 million by Monday night, clearing the $57.5 mark. Over $60 by next weekend, topping out at $70? $75?

“The Lost City” added another $1.9 to finally clear the $100 million mark. Maybe Sandy Bullock needs to team up with TC.

“Men” isn’t setting the world on fire. Another $1.5, just over $6 and counting.

Figures from Exhibitor Relations — ercboxoffice.com — and Box Office Pro

“Beast” is an awkward blend of camp, over-the-top action picture and even campier over-produced production numbers featuring gorgeous stars of the Indian cinema and a sea of sexily-choreographed Indian extras.

Two and a half hours of slaughter, song and dance?

“In a situation like this,” one ineffectual official sputters (in Tamil with English subtitles) outside a mall that’s been taken over by terrorists, “did you really expect to see a terrorist’s head fly out the window?”

Yes, today’s “Around the World with Netflix” outing reminds us that there’ll always be a Bollywood.

Thalapathy Vijay and Pooja Hegde co-star in this Nelson Dilipkumar film. “Veera” is an ex-cop suffering from the mildest (most inexpressive, anyway) case of PTSD ever. An elaborately choreographed raid to shoot up dozens of terrorists to capture their leader got a little girl killed.

His “recovery” is complete when he joins an incompetent Tamilnadu (South Indian state) private security firm run by an aging lummox (Vtv Ganesh). That’s also the workplace of this beauty, Preetha (Hegde), who came on to him at a wedding (not hers) and promptly ditched her “short” and clingy fiance.

If Veera and Preetha lead the entire wedding party in a rowdy, super-sexy and riotously over-the-top dance-off, it must be love.

First day on the job? A mall that fired them as their “security” is taken over by terrorists who want to bargain for their leader’s release. Veera must stab, strangle and behead his way through the bad guys to save the day, get the girl and sing and dance happily ever after.

Two disparate genres like this are only ever mashed up on the Subcontinent. And while the singing and dancing are but bookends — there’s no twerking, popping or locking in the midst of the mayhem — large passages of this movie underscore how ill-suited they are paired-up in the same film.

Veera loudly shoots and grenades his way through minions in the film’s opening battle, while in the building next door, terrorist leaders sit quietly, discuss their plans and sip tea, not hearing the bedlam a few meters away.

The hostage incident has comic relief — two bumbling security slobs named “Jack” and “Jill” (Redin Kingsley and Yogi Babu) — and a painfully elaborate string of “Kill this guy this way” and “that guy another way” episodes, dully interrupted by what inept officials are twiddling their thumbs over outside.

It’s never as funny as it should be, nor as grimly exciting as it might have been, although there’s a giddy Fosse-meets-hip hop quality to the song and dance, and the wirework/FX-littered fights have their John Woo moments.

Vijay is more convincing as a singing actor than as a badass, and there’s no subtlety to either pose. And Hegde needs to work outside of the patriarchal Indian cinema for us to see if she’s more than a beauty who can sing and dance. Writer-director Nelson — how he bills himself, but I hear he’s considering “Lord Nelson” — gives her nothing to do here.

Rating: TV-MA, bloody violence aplenty

Cast: Thalapathy Vijay, Pooja Hegde, Vtv Ganesh, Yogi Babu, Redin Kingsley and Shine Tom Chacko

Credits: Scripted and directed by Nelson Dilipkumar . A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:36

Wondrous.