Movie Nation

A few obstacles remain before James “Guardians of the Galaxy” Gunn is officially canonized for pulling “The Suicide Squad,” the DC universe and Warner Brothers out of the comic book movie doldrums.

Firstly, there’s the undebatable fact that Warners/DC has set the bar so low. Everybody watching the non “Dark Knight” films sits with fingers crossed, hoping that “THIS time” they won’t “Jonah Hex/Zack Snyder/David Ayer” up the works.

“The Suicide Squad” reset is a big step up from the 2016 film, a slight improvement on “Birds of Prey” and more watchably “fun” than “Wonder Woman 2,” “Aquaman,” or any recent “Justice” this or “Super” that. Gunn gets what a giggle these “dark” endeavors should be and proceeds accordingly.

Yet this “Squad” has an indifferent villain, somnambulant middle acts and violence so glibly gory it’d made Deadpool wince. The time shifts in the story are handled with cute animated “titles,” but are still clumsy. And sure, the carnage is played for comedy. See enough of it and you start to feel numbed to it, as if the movie is sucking out a little piece of your soul.

But Gunn brings a playfulness to the entire genre every time out, and that’s the saving grace of his “Squad.” Take the best thing about the first two entries in this universe — Margot Robbie‘s Harley Quinn — and reduce her number of scenes to punch up her impact. She dazzles in this part, a callous, coarse, kewpie doll with “killing” on the brain, and a tween urchin’s view of the mean streets.

“I love the rain, it’s like angels are splooging all over us!”

The shift in tone is embodied by Oscar winner Viola Davis‘s performances in the 2016 “Squad” and now. Now she is WAY over the top as Amanda Waller, the Project X/”Dark Ops” chief with a murderous temper and a fanatic’s commitment to “mission.” She doesn’t care how many she kills or gets killed, has little concern for “collateral damage” and gets into shouting spit-rages with the guy she wants to “lead” this latest mission, gadget-packed marksman and prison inmate Bloodsport (Idris Elba).

“You fail to follow my orders in any way, and I detonate the explosive device in the base of your skull.”

Make her character funny and you change the tone and the franchise.

This “mission” assembles two teams for an assault on the Caribbean island nation of Corto Maltese, where a coup has put a dangerous top secret facility and its head scientist, The Thinker (Peter Capaldi) in play. “Terminate with extreme prejudice” it and maybe even him at all costs.

One team includes Harley Quinn, the sadistic Savant (Michael Rooker), Mongal
(Mayling Ng), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Blackguard (Pete Davidson) and others.

As much as I’d like to joke that the picture peaks with Blackguard/Davidson getting his head blown off (talk about “fan service”), it doesn’t.

Elba handles the comic requirements of his part and the picture well, bouncing off Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), playing up his character’s “thing” about rats (“She controls rats? What a REVOLTIN’ superpower!”), squabbling with his fellow “marksman,” the ironically murderous Peacemaker (John Cena, hilarious) and rolling his eyes at Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian, almost the funniest of the lot) and the profoundly dim but almost unkillable beast, Nanaue, aka “King Shark,” the “I am Groot!” dolt in this “Galaxy.”

Sylvester Stallone voices the shark, which is all you need to know.

Joel Kinnaman (“For All Mankind,” “House of Cards”) returns to the unenviable, somewhat thankless role of Col. Rick Flag, “straight man” to this crackers crew.

The mission is launched, mayhem ensues and mistakes are made — a LOT of them. Waller’s bureaucrats take it in the ‘nads as being apathetic office drones, careless about other people’s lives and sloppy in their “research” that built this comically-mismatched “team.”

The dialogue is comic-book punchy and funny. “Nothing like a bloodbath to start the day.”

“I don’t like to kill people,” Polka Dot man confesses. “But if I pretend it’s my mom, it’s easy.” That sets up the funniest running gag of the picture. And Gunn loves his running gags.

I thought the film started strong and finished with a whimper, with flashes of fun standing out in draggy middle acts that play like boring filler. Despite dabbling in Banana Republic politics and American “meddling,” it’s not really “about” anything.

Robbie, Cena, Davis and Elba stand out, Capaldi looks annoyed at showing up in heavy makeup and not having anything funny to play.

This makes for a just-fun-enough, perfectly-serviceable sequel and reset of the “Squad,” and best wishes for Warner Brothers to make a mint with it. But unlike “Guardians of the Galaxy” or anything with the almost-as-violent “Deadpool” in it, I can’t say I’d ever care to sit through it again.

MPA Rating: R for strong violence and gore, language throughout, some sexual references, drug use and brief graphic nudity

Cast: Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, John Cena, Daniela Melchior, Alice Braga, Joel Kinnaman, Peter Capaldi, Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, Pete Davidson and the voice of Sly Stallone.

Credits: Scripted and directed by James Gunn. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:12

As if “Groundhog Day” wasn’t creepy enough.

“6:45” is a “live the same day over” tale in mystery thriller form. But the perils we see on screen pale with those facing any filmmaker who tells a story that circles around and repeats itself. How do you keep that repetition from turning monotonous and boring?

Director Craig Singer’s latest horror B-movie is a step up from his usual fare (“Dark Ride,” “A Good Night to Die”), a moody, meditative and murderous account of a couple’s weekend getaway that turns terminal. As in, “You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Jules (Augie Duke of “Burning Kentucky,””Antidote”) and Bobby (Michael Reed of “Wild Boar”) take an off-season make-up trip to an island named Bog Grove, a “quaint” village with lots of Mackinanac Island-styled wedding cake houses.

The place is largely empty, and the reason for that isn’t something that the nail-clipping weirdo (Armen Garo) who runs the hotel where they’re staying gives up easily.

They walk the empty streets, boardwalks and beaches, hit the local bar where they run into oddball locals. Jules has no sooner said “I wish this day could last forever” when something awful happens. And when the alarm clock wakes them up at 6:45 the next day, they live it all over again.

It’s just that bobby is the only one getting “serious deja vu.” Jules writes that off as a dream, and when they argue, she’s the one who quips “How many times are we going to do this?”

“Good question.”

There are strange goings-on at the hotel, and creepy occurrences at the local bar. Seeing a ghostly-pale, hooded stranger staring at them gives Bobby a clue. And seeing the fellow more than once, he Bill Murrays a plan. He will switch up their routine, avoid repeating the “same day,” foil that stranger and change their fate.

Easier said than done.

Other clues are hinted at and eventually examined in the film’s dreamy revisitings of their day, with time tracked as “Day 8,” and ever onward.

Reed adds a few shadings to the performance as Bobby’s past is peeled away, his “problems” (jealousy, a temper, etc.) touched on.

And Jules? She’s just along for the ride, questioning Bobby anew with each day’s repetition, diving into their “Let’s stay in today” sex scenes. Hey, anybody to “break the cycle,” right?

Singer’s solution to the “repetition” problem, slowing things down for a slo-mo packed third act, doesn’t solve the film’s quest to maintain interest in this story. And the over-explaining that fleshes out the finale is redundant. We’ve already guessed most of what’s revealed by the very bad supporting actors playing stereotypical bar tender, cops, etc.

I found this more “interesting” as a problem-solving exercise than entertaining, more “watchable” than “good.”

MPA Rating: R, for strong violence and gore, sexual content, nudity, and language throughout

Cast: Augie Duke, Michael Reed, Armen Garo, Sasha K. Gordon, Thomas G. Waites and Remy Ma

Credits: Directed by Craig Singer, script by Robert Dean Klein. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:36

Well, we’re into August. So I guess I can say, with all confidence, that “CODA” is the feel good movie of the summer.

It’s a plucky and poignant coming-of-age romance about a teen who loves to sing. But as a “Child of Deaf Adults” (CODA), that’s not something this Gloucester, Massachusetts fishing family values. If Ruby, played by British actress Emilia Jones (“PATrick the Pug,” T’s “Locke & Key”), is going to do something with her talent, she’ll have to manage that on her own, and squeeze it in between all the responsibilities she has in her insular, tightknit family.

Writer-director Sian Heder (“Orange is the New Black”) builds her story on that foundation, how Ruby, had to grow up entirely too fast. She is her family’s interpreter of the hearing world, signing everything from negotiations over the price of flounder to Mom and Dad’s (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur) urgent and embarrassing visit to the doctor.

Who knew “jock itch” could be transmitted via sex? What teen would want to hear that, or for that matter her parents’ uninhibited, cacophonous coitus?

But we also learn how Ruby, born with hearing, endured teasing from the very start of school because she didn’t have parents who could teach her to speak. The mean girl insults aren’t just “Do you smell fish?” in Ruby’s case. “Freak” is a hard label to shake.

But on the boat, where she’s just as vital to the family’s ability to function as everywhere else, Ruby belts out soul of the ’60s. That’s not why she signs up for choir. She sees cute Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) join up, and picks her junior year elective accordingly.

Lucky for Ruby ’60s soul, Marvin Gaye and Motown, is also the jam of choir director “Berrrnarrrrrrrrrrrdo Villalobos,” played with flamboyant, theatrical glee by Mexican star Eugenio Derbez, who finally has a North American role worthy of his talents.

Because “Dios mio,” this “Mister V” is unconventional, from his “Little Dog, Big Dog” panting (breath control) exercises to choosing the nakedly sexual “Let’s Get it On” for their repertoire.

And Mr. V. “hears something” in Ruby, a talent that could change her destiny.

Heder decorates this intimate, lived-in world with little flourishes of color. Ruby’s true-blue friend Gertie (Amy Forsyth) is on a bit of a sexual tear, one that might make its way into Ruby’s family.

“Leo got HOT,” Gertie coos about Ruby’s deaf fisherman brother (Daniel Durant).

“Ewwwwwwww!”

“What? He can’t HEAR me!”

Miles, from a musical family, is picked to duet the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell “You’re All I Need to Get By” with shy Ruby. But how will her family, especially Dad and brother Leo, “get by” on the trawler Angela Rose without their hearing shipmate?

The songs were carefully selected to mirror the dramatic situations we see unfolding. Ruby is literally seeing and hearing life from “Both Sides Now,” and “It’s Your Thing” and “Let’s Get It On” need no explanation.

Heder serves up the stand-bys of such musical dramedies with skill. The audition for choir bit amuses even before the cherubic James Corden look-alike pipes up. We know there’ll be a scene when the family has to sit through a concert they can’t hear, and Heder tugs at the expected heartstrings, and finds clever ways to pump up the poignancy built into the moment.

There’s a hint of edge to the nature of the family’s dependence on their child, with Oscar-winner Matlin playing the hell out of Mom’s focused myopia. Her demands, and the family’s, are always going to come first. Veteran bit player Kotsur’s animated signing can be furious or hilarious, and he and Matlin comically click as a couple.

Jones has a winsome screen presence and a pleasant, lilting voice that may not sell Ruby as “Berklee School of Music” material, but thin or not, it gets by.

As does “CODA.” If the advertising doesn’t lean on that old standby, “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry,” somebody at Apple is missing the boat.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for strong sexual content and language (profanity) and drug content (pot use)

Cast: Emilia Jones, Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur, Daniel Durant, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Amy Forsyth and Eugenio Derbez

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sian Heder. An Apple (August 13) release.

Running time: 1:52

“Hostage House” is a half-speed thriller about a real estate agent trapped in the “open house” from hell.

Stop grinning and clapping with glee. Yes, I know that “she probably had it coming” is a lot of people’s first reaction to that scenario. But let’s be bigger than our worst or most annoying “realtor” experiences, shall we?

Jennifer Taylor of “Shameless” and “Two and Half Men” is struggling agent Susan Daniels, trying to get her smart-mouthed daughter (Julia Terranova) out the door to college so that she can sell their house, and maybe sell this Everett Canyon mansion, with “70 fenced in acres” she’s just landed as a listing so that she can get them out of debt.

We see the “5/4” with its “game room,” in-house theater, CCTV cameras and lockdown systems via Susan’s tours on open house day.

Heather drops by to surprise her at day’s end. But they can’t get out the door without noticing the police sirens, lights and helicopters. And that last car pulling up the drive might be that one “over asking price” offer. Or it might be just who the cops are looking for.

The blood on Keith’s hand, which we see even though Susan doesn’t, answers that question. Bleeding Keith (Justin C. Schilling) and trigger-finger Natalie (Emily Sweet) tie Susan up, and figure out Heather’s there, too. Eventually.

It’s not just the threat of violence that turns this into torture. It’s Natalie’s mealy-mouthed lectures on the “entitled” class, “the haves and the have-mores” that she’d like to be robbing.

“Folks like you, your idea of being broke is having to skimp on your yearly trip to Cabo!”

There’s often a little DIY surgery in such pictures, and inevitably somebody says “the good news is the bullet went right through” and “this is gonna hurt.” You hear that often enough and you’d swear screenwriters are recycling from the same worn out source.

The movie is flatly-acted, blandly plotted and pretty much stillborn until we’re treated to a flash of what real estate hustlers are supposed to be good at shows itself — negotiating, getting “a deal.” But even that never heats up to lukewarm.

The “escapes” and “near escapes” are dull versions of such situations seen in many a tepid thriller that preceded this one.

“Hostage House” makes the viewer feel like the hostage.

MPA Rating: TV-14, violence, some profanity

Cast: Jennifer Taylor, Emily Sweet, Julia Terranova, Justin C. Schilling, Richard Neil

Credits: Directed by David Benullo, script by Daniel West. A MarVista release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:26

“Naked Singularity,” Chase Palmer’s film of lawyer/novelist Sergio De La Pava’s book, makes a single self-conscious reference to “The French Connection.”

A New Yorker in the film notes the criminal enterprise that involves smuggling drugs inside a Lincoln and describes it as “some Popeye Doyle level s–t,” a similarity that most any film buff has picked up on already.

William Friedkin’s “French” masterpiece was a methodical, blunt-force trauma account of a drug investigation and bust with a soul-sucking suggestion that the “real” criminals, the rich and the well-connected, never get caught.

“Naked Singularity” makes exactly the same point in a far more clumsy, ham-handed fashion. Its “two systems of justice” parable is coated in a sense of doom, of multiverses playing out their plots and signs of the “End Times” all around for the conspiracy-minded and those willing to connect the dots.

Power outages, futility rising up in the throats of one and all with a growing dread, a “justice” system rightly regarded as malevolent and uncaring by its practitioners, especially idealistically cynical public defender Casi (John Boyega) as he deals with a prickly, pedantic and dispassionate judge (Linda Lavin) — this is Dystopia Today.

But this “singularity” business, ranted about by Casi’s chalkboard-scribbling scientist/landlord (Tim Blake Nelson)? Strictly an afterthought, dabbled in just enough to suggest more was in an earlier draft of the script or a flabbier, even less coherent cut of the film.

We’re starting to “see the unseeable” Angus the scientist sputters, a “ripple” in time and space that shows “the bindings of our universe are unraveling.”

Damn. Sounds fascinating. And no, that’s not what this movie is about, not even with “chapters” counting down to The End — “8 Days until the Collapse,” and the like.

Olivia Cooke dresses down and Tinders-up as Lea, a window clerk with the city’s impounded vehicle lot. That’s where the Lincoln Navigator has been towed. A rough-trade fellow (Ed Skrein) brazenly offers her a bribe to pick the SUV up, but she doesn’t bite.

That doesn’t mean she won’t right-swipe the pushy, flattering hunk “Craig” on her next outing at the club. And that doesn’t mean she won’t hear his Lincoln loot pitch in full as a sort of pillow talk.

Lea’s entanglement leads back to her onetime PD, Casi. And Casi’s got a corrupt colleague (Bill Skarsgård) who knows about the Lincoln, the drugs, the “cartel” involved and the amount of money about to change hands. He’s more than happy to mix Casi up in getting their hands on that.

The drug deal may reference “The French Connection,” but the courtroom scenes pay homage to any drama (“And Justice for All…”) where an upstart lawyer gets mouthy enough to be disbarred by his least favorite judge.

“Sending a man to jail because he isn’t dying fast enough seems petulant, even for you, your honor.”

Lavin’s cyanide-laced “and the Constitution survives another day” retorts suggest somebody resigned to being a cog in “the machine,” and willing to erase anyone trying to throw a spanner into the works.

The “singularity” stuff pops up here and there as the clumsy but thorough Craig points to a picture of Queen Elizabeth and identifies her “reptiloid eyes” as amusing proof that SOMEthing is going on. “Saturday Night Live’s” Kyle Mooney headlines another seeming digression from the timeline. Let’s just say his character heads another “consortium” mixed up in this, and that he wears Payot in this role.

Boyega impresses as a sleepless, manic young man bent on reforming this system with hustles, work-arounds and off-the-record advice to clients. Cooke is just recognizable enough in big hair, long black fingernails and New York “bureaucratic functionary” indifference in her eyes. She sort of pulls off this wrong-side-of-the-legal-system character with all the character failings included.

But as “Naked Singularity” lurches through its countdown, even the stars seem a little lost in what they’re acting out and how it fits in what many of us would agree is the worst version of “the best of all possible worlds” that everyone is trapped in.

Even Spiderverse-savvy Spiderman might consider this singularly confusing, a botched effort to say something scientific-sound and profound in a story that’s basically a lawyer-novelist riffing on “The French Connection,” and doing it badly.

MPA Rating: R for language throughout, some violence, sexual references and drug use

Cast: John Boyega, Olivia Cooke, Bill Skarsgård, Ed Skrein, Linda Lavin, Kyle Mooney and Tim Black Nelson.

Credits: Directed by Chase Palmer, script by Chase Palmer and David Matthews, based on the novel by Sergio De La Pava. A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:33

The “elements” of “Resort to Love” add up to a better movie than this Hallmark-lite romance, a pleasantly-bland star vehicle for Christina Milian.

It’s a “get over that man” romance with Milian starring as a singer who lost her fiance to her career, and then loses her big break in a not-amusing-enough public meltdown that the star (Kayne Lee Harrison) who had her sing on his LP tosses, trashing the release.

And it’s set in the gorgeous, under-filmed island paradise of Mauritius, where shattered Erica (Milian) takes a gig singing at the Mer de Saphir resort, next to the “Jolly Rancher Blue” Indian Ocean.

The set-up? Erica’s ex, Jason (Jay Pharoah, utterly wasted in the part) is there, too. He’s getting married.

As Erica’s social media manager pal got her this “get away” on the condition that she sing in the lounge and at any weddings that come up there, well you see where this is going.

“Going” as onto the beach and across a rope bridge on a hike in the mountains, giving this Netflix movie its “best paid vacation ever” status for Milian (“Be Cool,” Netflix’s “Falling Inn Love”).

Other complications include the would-be groom’s hunky ex-military brother (Sinqua Walls, literally twice as tall as Milian), who might be her new love interest. If she’s up for that. If he was a little more interestingly written, that is.

And then there’s the bride, Beverly (Christiani Pitts), who doesn’t suspect a thing and thus befriends Erica and sets up many an awkward meal and conversation as the Big Secret is kept from her.

Steven K. Tsuchida’s film starts FAR better than it finishes, with broken-hearted Erica vamp-weeping through “I Had the Time of My Life” for another happy couple, and generally coming undone at everything in her life that has her “singing at weddings” on the cusp of 40.

The character’s interesting enough, with a newfound mistrust of men and confusion about lingering feelings for the ex. But there’s not enough for her to work. More scenes of Erica “playing along” yet undermining the upcoming wedding, suggesting inappropriate “our dance” wedding songs — “Unbreak my Heart” by Toni Braxton and Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable,” breakup tunes — would have helped.

Pitts throws herself into this and has the funniest line. “I will give you $200 to throw her OUT of this van…$500 if it’s still moving!”

These two didn’t need a sunnier movie to strut their stuff in. Mauritius is plenty sunny. But laughs and lump-in-the-throat moments are in too short supply for “Resort to Love” to come off.

MPA Rating: PG

Cast: Christina Milian, Tymberlee Hill, Sinqua Walls, Christiani Pitts, Alexander Hodge, Jeryl Prescott, Kayne Lee Harrison and Jay Pharaoh.

Credits: Directed by Steven K. Tsuchida, script by Tabi McCartney and Dana Schmalenberg. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

“Notorious Nick” is a workmanlike, formulaic “overcome all obstacles” MMA fight picture in the classic mold.

But it’s based on the true story of MMA fighter Nick Newell. And the “obstacles” basically boil down to one thing. Nick Newell fought with just one arm. So yes, it’s not just “inspired by a true story.” It’s inspiring.

This bio-pic follows Newell from childhood, where young Nick (William Jackson Kelly) is bullied as “the freak” for being born one with arm. But he makes that friend for life, fellow wrestling fan Abi (Marcellus Maxwell).

They imitate the pro wrasslin’ trash talk of their idol, Bubba “the Bear” Braun and horse around with his moves right up to the day a high school coach (Barry Livingston) taunts the now-teenaged Nick (Cody Christian of TV’s “All American” and “Teen Wolf”) and Abi (Cameron James Matthews of “Freeland”).

“Why don’t you guys stop faking like you’re wrestling and do it for real?”

One plus in this script is that it opens with Nick losing a fight (as an adult) and shows the teasing (“Hey, it’s The Elbow.”) and humiliations he endures on the mat. He loses. A lot. His buddy Abi, the one who talks him into MMA after high school, is a natural.

What just happened? “He kicked my ass.” “The key to getting better, know ‘why.'”

The villains are properly villainous (nobody wants to fight “the gimp”), and the leads — Christian, Matthews and Livingston — are quite convincing.

Elisabeth Röhm plays the supportive single mom who tells him “The only disability in life is a s—ty attitude.” She’s the one who takes him to an inspirational lecture by former major league pitcher Jim Abbott, who pitched for the Angels and the Yankees, with just one arm.

Livingston is a steady presence at the coach who doesn’t care for “quitters.” And Kevin Pollack is the droll promoter who cracks “Good thing you write with your right hand” and endorses Nick as he subdues a foe in his last amateur tryout.

“OK, he’s ‘technically asleep,’ now. Nice going.”

Yes, the training montages are straight-up cliches (This time he loads rocks into that tractor tire he drags around) and the story ventures into what can only be called melodrama, even if the melodramatic elements are largely true, or at least fact-based.

And the fight scenes and strategizing training sessions are well-choreographed and shot, the most instructive I’ve ever seen in an MMA movie. Yes, wrestlers do make some of the toughest foes in the octagon. “Notorious Nick” explains how.

I don’t want to oversell this, but “Notorious Nick” follows a formula and makes it work. Stay through the credits if you want to see the real Nick Newell in action.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for sports action/violence, and language

Cast: Cody Christian, Elisabeth Röhm, Cameron James Matthews, Barry Livingston and Kevin Pollack

Credits: Directed by Aaron Leong, script by Josh Campbell, Darrin Reed and Matthew Stuecken. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:28

Regal Cinemas isn’t relying on Paramount (“Snake Eyes” sank without a trace on its second weekend), Disney (half the money for “Jungle Cruise” went to Disney+) or anybody else to fill seats.

They’ve booked this supernatural thriller as August filler.

Interviewing Amy Heckerling (“Fast times at Ridgemont High,” “Clueless”) we got off topic and recalled “sitting next to the TV, waiting for this damned thing to come on.”

She was in Cali, I was in Alaska, waiting on August 1, 1981 for MTV to strike a blow for youth music culture like no other.

Heckerling remembered it informing her work from thence forward. I remember buying koala bear dolls for a girlfriend who could not get enough of that damned Men at Work video for a song that was plagiarized just a little bit .

This video posted below was MTV to me. Pop rock, models, whimsy and filmmaking that was distinctly “video” in medium and style.

MTV, we hardly knew ye.

The best damned action film of the summer has nothing to do with comic books and does not feature some perfectly-put-together gym rat in tights sticking “the super-hero landing.”

It’s Korean, and before you ask, there’s nary a Busan zombie in sight.

“Escape from Mogadishu” is a nerve-wracking account of diplomats scrambling to escape Somalia just as the 1990 civil war erupted and finished the country’s transition to “failed state.”

They were representatives of the two Koreas, so their harrowing attempt to get out didn’t get much attention in the West. And while I can’t vouch for how much of this Ryoo Seung-wan thriller is the literal truth, what we see is just jaw-dropping. Nothing Hollywood could dream up tops the action climax that real history and Ryoo (“The City of Violence,” “The Battleship Island”) serve up here.

I mean, WOW.

The setting is the “Killing Fields” anarchy that set in the instant Somali civilians rose up to overthrow their dictatorship, thereby inviting rebel militias to charge in and overwhelm the army and police of the capital. The story has a hint of “Argo” about it, as the South Korean and North Korean embassies, blood enemies, have to cooperate to get their tiny staffs out before the slaughter reach them.

This is pre-“Blackhawk Down,” before U.S. intervention in the humanitarian disaster, and long before lawlessness settled into an equilibrium where militias and war lords ran everything and piracy (“Captain Phillips”) became a leading export.

Ryoo introduces us to the players, overwhelmed South Korean Ambassador Han (Kim Yoon-seok, amusingly flustered), hopeful that he can “gift” and negotiate his way into favor with the Somali President Barre, and new enough to the job that he still frets about why the North Koreans “can’t play by the rules.”

South Korea was courting many countries in Africa, looking for the votes for U.N. membership. North Korea’s cunning Ambassador Rim (Heo Joon-ho, deliciously aloof and arrogant) is hellbent on stopping that.

There’s just enough of the diplomatic struggles, the spy game played out by each ambassador’s young, thin and Raybanned “intelligence” counselor (Jo In-sung plays the upstart South Korean, Koo Kyo-hwan is his runty, short-tempered North Korean counterpart) to give an idea of the stakes and the place this “game” is playing out in.

Double-crosses, double-dealing when it comes to arms sales, the North was eating the South’s lunch.

A CIA memo and an Aussie journalist might say of the Somalis that they “don’t think they’re ready for a civil war, yet,” but events quickly prove them wrong. The riots turn into an armed insurrection, the power goes out, communications crash and looting and rebel infiltrators turn the entire city into a free fire zone.

The tiny Korean consulates don’t have guards to protect them, the means of getting out and can’t even call home for fresh orders. They’re on their own, with undisciplined, trigger-happy child soldiers holding their fate in their Somali hands.

Can the two hated enemies “steel” their “hearts” and help each other out of this fix?

Ryoo gives us one tense standoff after another at embassy gates, government ministries (abruptly abandoned as the “real” looters — the government — fled), in the streets and in the consulates once the shooting and looting begins.

The story is related through parallel characters. The ambassadors must save face, follow protocols or agree to break them “through (personal) negotiation.” Their mistrust is amplified in their subordinates, with one intelligence agent demanding that his boss not approach “those South Korean bastards” and the other insisting they can’t trust “those commie bastards.”

The humor in the story — and yes, there’s humor even in Dante’s Inferno playing out in the Horn of Africa — comes from that mistrust and hatred. The North Korean children of the staff have their eyes shielded from the decor in the dark, shell-shattered South Korean embassy. Too many Seoul Olympics posters and pictures of prosperity are capable of corrupting their young minds.

An awkward shared meal is tense right up to the moment Ambassador Han realizes the commies fear the food is poisoned.

And we’ve seen how Han’s wife (So-jin Kim), a pious Christian, imposes her “Let us pray” on even the Buddhists in her husband’s staff. But when it comes to breaking the ice, it is wives and families who make the first progress. But “pathos” of the “Why can’t we get along?” variety never settles in. Relations range from hostile to frosty to grudging, but never further.

The sets are a sea of fires and firefights, as impressive as anything Ridley Scott managed for “Blackhawk Down.” But the struggles here aren’t so much heroic as just human, flawed people under pressure struggling to improvise their way out of a life-or-death jam, and bitching about who used the toilet after the water was cut off.

It’s not giving too much to say that the movie’s climax involves a convoy, and I’ve never been more nostalgic for my 1980 Mercedes 240D, thanks to these scenes of overbuilt German cars rumbling through a hail of lead and Molotov cocktails.

You want great action? Eschew the comic book movies and read a few subtitles. “Escape from Mogadishu” is in a league of its own this summer.

MPA Rating: TV-14, violence, profanity

Cast: Kim Yoon-seok, In-Sung Jo, Huh Joon-ho, So-jin Kim, Kyo-hwan Koo, Man-sik Jeong

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ryoo Seung-wan. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:01