Movie Nation

The camera tracks down what is unmistakably a young woman’s naked back as the voice of Stephen Fry, throwing himself into an amusing dudgeon, reads from the letters of the puzzle print-maker M.C. Escher, griping about “the hippies in San Francisco” who are “printing my work clandestinely,” turning it into “place mats” and color-tinting it for posters and what not.

Beneath all this grumping is a rasping buzz. And then the camera reveals that this young woman is getting a grand tattoo based on the works of one of the most widely disseminated, appreciated and posterized artists of modern times and all times.

Fry vamps Escher’s quizzical, mocking words on 1960s “California” kids and “their addiction to narcotics,” and rocker Graham Nash recalls his early fandom moving him to call the Great Man at home in the Netherlands.

But but, Escher complained, “I am not an artist. I’m a mathematician!”

Fry performs a rejection letter to a certain Rolling Stone who inquired about acquiring unseen Escher art for “a record sleeve” (album cover), ending with a huffy “please inform Mr. Jagger that I am not ‘Maurits’ (his first name) to him, but, respectfully, ‘M.C. Escher.'”

Escher’s bemused incredulity with the generation that discovered and popularized his work, late in life, reminds one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s shocking realization of what hippy fans figured was “pipe weed” in his Middle Earth novels, embraced by the same tuned-in/turned-on generation.

That sets the tone for Robin Lutz’s delightful documentary, “M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity,” a playful but serious look at the life and work of a wildly popular woodcut printer, lithographer, painter and mezzotint print-maker Maurits Cornelius Escher.

Using animation, interviews with his surviving family (and Graham Nash), archival footage of Escher at work and old family photographs, with Fry narrating from Escher’s own writings, Lutz paints a most entertaining if somewhat limited (No art experts, art world fans, etc.) portrait of the man, his mathematical obsessions, his travels and his work.

We hear about his childhood, learn that he abandoned architecture in school, see early sketches and landscapes — unmistakably his, with an architect’s polished, fine lines — and visit the places that formed his eye and informed his art.

He went to Tuscany as a young man and met his wife there. And no one who knows Europe and Escher’s work will be surprised that the man was transfixed by the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, an ornate Moorish castle covered in mosaics, frescoes, archways and gardens, “the whole” of it, Escher enthused, “a work of art.”

Escher, often doing his drawing in one of the towering, white-walled Reformation churches in Belgium or the Netherlands where he lived, conjured up perspective-challenging puzzle pictures where “you don’t where where to begin, or end.”

The repeating patterns of “tessellation” fascinated him, and generations of young fans lost themselves in his most famous works, which were turned into millions of posters in the ’60s, ’70s and beyond.

The film, coming to New York and LA Feb. 5 ( streaming thereafter) visits a Milan retrospective of his work with the cleverest “put yourself in an Escher selfie” gimmick I’ve ever seen in an art exhibit.

Escher brings that out in creative people, from rock stars and black light poster purveyors (who put color in his art) to filmmakers who saw a “Labyrinth” of a movie in a single Escher print.

If Ben Stiller’s getting lost in artwork in a “Night at the Museum,” you can bet your bottom Guilder that it’s in an Escher maze.

As I noted, the one shortcoming here is the lack of artists, collectors and academics to place him within the ranks of great artists, or dismiss him as another faddish creator of “Big Eyes” or pop art or multi-dimensional hanging jigsaw puzzle posters for teenagers wanting something trippy to stare at as we conduct the chemical experiments of youth.

No matter. The people have spoken, as has the marketplace, and we know what we like.

So much so that a lot of us are willing to get M.C. Escher’s masterworks needled into our skin fifty years after his death, sixty years after the first Tommy Chong to take a long gaze at an intricate picture that hinted at infinity and noted, “Far out, man.”

MPA Rating: Unrated

Cast: George Escher, Jan Escher, Graham Nash, Liesbeth Escher, narrated by Stephen Fry.

Credits: Directed by Robin Lutz, script by Robin Lutz, Marijnke de Jong. A Kino Lorber/Zeitgeist release.

Running time: 1:21

“Cicada Song” is a sometimes compelling mystery-thriller set in America’s heartland, a missing persons story set in remote, rural Missouri.

The feature debut of writer-director Michael Starr has many of the requisite ingredients of a solid indie outing — a little-filmed setting, missing children, and adults, ethnic tensions surrounding the “Mexican” farm labor, with small town small mindedness on ready display.

What this 77 minute movie lacks is anything like a remotely satisfying, or even comprehensible solution to the mystery, and an ending that doesn’t look like “Let’s wrap it up in post (production) because we’re out of money.”

Rushed, “pat” in its summing up, and yet under-explained, the finale is where this uneven, almost-passable picture drops the ball.

Somebody left for dead is coming to in the woods, somebody female. The back-story of who she is and how she got there, awakening to the “Cicada Song,” is our story.

Hispanic convenience store clerk Annabelle (Jenny Mesa) and farm manager Karen (Lyndsey Lutz) are a couple, which ruffles a lot of feathers in tiny Hermann, Missouri.

Annabelle’s ex (Rob Tepper) is downright hostile. Any time he sees either one of them, he can’t let go of the d-word, the one that rhymes with “bike.”

Karen’s estranged from her father. “Dad!” “Don’t CALL me that.”

And then there are the older, sullen jerks like Bob Wilkes (L.R. Hults) who remind us that farmers are basically small businessmen, inclined to take shortcuts and skip out on loans, and not necessarily the hearty, self-sufficient stereotypes America pretends they are. At least Bob’s mentally-challenged son (Stephen Blum) seems nice. When he’s not gawking at Annabelle.

Karen’s bosses (Kim Reed and Joseph Bottoms) are indulgent, prone to giving generous bonuses. She keeps their farm in the black, plays hardball with suppliers and learned Spanish to deal with the hired hands — and win Annabelle’s heart.

But now, the workers are telling her a little girl is missing. Her employers seem unconcerned. Nobody wants to involve the authorities. Karen starts digging around, learns of another missing kid, starts to wonder if a local creeper is responsible, and if that connects to out of town land speculators.

And then an adult goes missing.

What Starr gets exactly right is the intimacy of shrinking small towns, how everybody knows everybody else, everyone has history. Richard, who used to date Annabelle, went to high school with Karen. When farmer Bob blows a wad of cash on a new combine, that’s gossiped around town and certain to irk Karen, whose employers loaned him money he still hasn’t repaid.

But not everybody in the cast is a polished professional. And the story’s many holes, leaks and lapses in forward motion throw the clumsier performances into sharp relief.

The gay romance at the heart of the movie works, the glowering faces of the beer guts at the town bar when one of them walks in rings true.

But Starr overreaches for something bigger than the classic small town crime and tragedy this movie wants to be. The few twists that are here aren’t much, and the better twists we anticipate don’t come to pass.

And then that ending, which reminds one of David Lynch’s “Dune,” a movie that’s sauntered along suddenly rushes to get to some sort of conclusion — “whatever we have the footage to cover.”

Try again, folks.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity, slurs

Cast: Lyndsey Lantz, Jenny Mesa, Kim Reed, Joseph Bottoms, Rob Tepper, Cesar Ramos, L.R. Hults and Stephen Blum

Credits: Scripted and directed by Michael Starr. An Indie Rights film on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:17

As I’ve said before, that Craig Fairbrass is a proper British villain. A hulking, brutish mug, everything about him says Man of Action/Bloke-who-doesn’t-muck-about.

He makes solid British B-movies — thrillers with a caper, cash, some cars, some cuts and gunplay, calling foes “c–ts.”

That’s all “Gunned Down” (re-titled “London Heist” for distribution on Netflix) is. It’s a formula thriller about heists and betrayals, with a twist here and there, and all of it co-written by Fairbrass — who knows his brand — and based on a novel he also co-wrote.

Nice work if you can get it, right? But in sticking to formula yet dispensing with a lot of details common to the genre, it’s not nearly as satisfying a heist picture as you’d hope.

The “formula” makes itself obvious in the first scene, a framing device that sees Fairbrass as Jack, bloodied and hurtling down some backroad, making one last getaway. The story is tucked inside that, what happened some weeks before.

That was the “last score” heist that he and three other “geezers” — in the British gangland sense (any tough guy) and American one (they’re mostly over 50, a couple over 60).

But the big haul is snatched from them after Jack’s Dad (veteran character actor Steven Berkoff) is grabbed, tortured and killed before he can launder the money. His mates (Tony Denham, Eddie Webber and Roland Manookian) won’t let him see the state Dad’s body was in. But after the funeral, Jack realizes the killers left his Dad’s cell in the garage where they ambushed him. Who’d he call? Who called him?

That sends our wronged robber and grieving son on the prowl. Lenny (Mem Ferda) is one suspect, a venal crime boss. Jack’ll need help from an old mate (James Cosmo) retired to Marbella.

And of course, the cops (Nick Moran) are on his trail the whole time.

It’s difficult to make a formula feel fresh every time out, and that’s what the formidable Fairbrass has run into in the films I’ve seen him in. Here, we see no plan-the-job scenes. We’re robbed of “getting the band back together” bits, the fussing over blueprints.

Fine.

Don’t bother trying to reason through how he keeps getting away, skipping the country, fleeing an island for a continent and then another island, because that’s not-exactly-explained either.

The women are merely pawns — Jack’s wife (Nathalie Cox) and a young woman on his Dad’s phone (Katie Clarkson-Hill) — or faceless strippers at the club where a couple of confrontations are set.

What we’re left with is a couple of capers, a couple of shootouts and a bloody, to-the-death fight in the finale. And slang, lots of Brit-villain-speak about “blags” (jobs), trash talk about having the gall “to come in here and give it large” and Cockney rhymes about “dipping the Jack & Jill” (stealing from the till).

Moran, a veteran of the Harry Potter pictures and decades of character actor work, gets off the best line, about his long pursuit of “Jack Cregan and his merry band of piss-takers.” But aside from the slangy stuff, the dialogue is stock material — “overstocked” — the obligatory “We’re the same, you and me.”

Bloody hell, lads. You can’t come up with better “Dicky birds” (words) than that?

Come on, old son. I’m running out of patience that Ray Winstone-the Next Generation will ever make a movie that lives up to your screen presence.

MPA Rating: R for violence, language throughout and some sexuality/nudity 

Cast: Craig Fairbrass, James Cosmo, Mem Ferda, Nick Moran, Steven Berkoff, Nathalie Cox and Katie Clarkson-Hill

Credits: Directed by Mark McQueen, script by Craig Fairbrass, Alexander Soskin and Chris Regan, based on a novel by Craig Fairbrass, Frank and Harper and Simon Eldon-Edington. A Lionsgate film on Netflix.

Running time: 1:35

Jan 14 on HBO Max.

Here’s how a New York Times critic made mention of actress and transgender icon Candy Darling‘s first appearance in a reviewable play, “Glamour, Glory and Gold” on a New York stage.

“Hers was the first female impersonation of a female impersonator that I have ever seen.”

Yes, her transformation, before hormones and before her turn as an Andy Warhol “Superstar,” was that convincing.

“Beautiful Darling” is a documentary remembrance of a transgender icon, a Long Islander born brunette James L. Slattery whose devotion to Hitchcock favorite Kim Novak convinced him that she was born to be a screen siren, a platinum blonde “fantasy” of the old studio system that she named Candy Darling.

“I am not a genuine woman,” she wrote in her diary in the late ’60s. “But I’m not interested in genuineness…I’m interested…in how QUALIFIED I am.”

Lou Reed sang about her in “Walk on the Wild Side.” Warhol put her in “Flesh” and “Women in Revolt,” and yet she died of cancer at 29, almost certainly due to the pills she was taking to repress her born-male hormones.

“Beautiful Darling” is an appreciation, an attempt by those who knew her in her element to place her within the firmament and a lot of comment on how she saw herself via old interviews and diary entries (read by Chloe Sevigny, with Patton Oswalt imitating Andy Warhol and Truman Capote) — all at a time when she might be arrested for merely dressing as a woman in Olde New York.

This celebrated film, the only feature completed by writer-director James Rasin, is worth revisiting in a time of runaway pronouns and ever-shifting acronyms, a reminder of how far the culture has come and how much of this evolution began with the exceptionally feminine and delicate Candy.

She was a person who insisted she was “transsexual, not a transvestite” to her friends, who insisted on being addressed by the proper pronoun right from the start, according to friends.

Fran Lebowitz notes that “she was her own artwork,” an expert — early on — “as a person playing the part of being themselves.”

She first gained notice pre-Warhol, but the artist, “Factory” founder and provocateur identified with her in a flash. “He liked people who had a sense of shame,” one Warhol confidant notes. Like himself.

Lebowitz places Darling at the center of that Manhattan ferment of art, celebrity and queer identity on the cusp of the ’70s, a time when you could enter the “back room” at Max’s Kansas City and find “an entire group of people who would have a tantrum if everyone wasn’t paying attention to THEM.”

At the center of all that, Candy Darling.

Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground were fascinated by her. Warhol and his film director Paul Morrissey realized the camera loved her. Her films were celebrated in the chic underground press and premiered at Hollywood’s Chinese Theater, her Kim Novack dreams come true.

And yet she was broke the entire time, famous for being famous, crashing on one friend’s sofa after another, paid $25 a scene for improvising her way through Warhol movies, even as she acted her way toward a grand triumph, a starring role in Tennessee Williams’ “Small Craft Warnings.”

It’s a downbeat story, but Rasin never lets it wallow in sadness, even as he frames it in Candy’s longtime companion Jeremiah Newton’s mid-2000s efforts to give her a proper grave, burying her urn and putting a proper tombstone on the spot.

“Darling” paints a vivid picture of the time, with all these hipsters and Hollywood hangers-on (Jane Fonda, Dennis Hopper, et al) seen in old footage mixing with Candy and Andy and the Factory folk.

If it all seems like some far off dream, it kind of was. But if you doubt just how far we’ve come, visit Candy’s Wikipedia page. You can’t find that male birth name (save for mention of her father’s name) there anywhere.

MPA Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, profanity

Cast: Candy Darling, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, Paul Morrissey, Jeremiah Newton, John Waters — and voices of Chloe Sevigny and Patton Oswalt.

Credits: Scripted and directed by James Rasin. A Corinth Films/Film Movement Plus release.

Running time: 1:27

It’s not every horror movie that opens by killing off future Oscar winners Laura Dern and George Clooney…and Charlie Sheen. And there can’t be many that climax with a godawful but epic imitation ’80s synth pop concert and big explosions triggered by or aimed at one gigantic animatronic grizzly bear.

And if there is such a film, there’s no way it can stay buried forever, unfinished. Because Oscar winner Louise Fletcher (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) is also in “Grizzly II: Revenge.” So are John Rhys-Davies, Deborah Foreman (“Valley Girl”), Deborah Raffin and Brits Ian McNeice and Timothy Spall.

The story of this grand debacle, a 1983 film that dropped into limbo before it was finished, has been told elsewhere. But now, at long last, we’ve got a cut that isn’t just consigned to bootlegs and film festivals. “Grizzly II” is here, albeit in truncated form (it ends in an abrupt flurry of editing-can’t-hide-this nonsense).

It’s a bear’s “revenge” sequel that doesn’t really connect to the 1976 drive-in sleeper hit that spawned it. But seriously, that’s the least of its issues.

A cult film and artifact from an age when pop was bad, Europop was worse and nature at the movies was at its most terrifying, putting it together for our viewing pleasure is almost an act of comeuppance for a whole lot of now-big-names.

A whole lot of folks took a paycheck and a vacation behind the still-standing Iron Curtain (Budapest, Hungary and environs) for a movie I’m sure Clooney, Dern, Fletcher and a few others were hoping would never see the light of day.

Charlie Sheen? He wouldn’t give a rip. And John Rhys-Davies, of the Indiana Jones and Hobbit movies? He’s bloody hilarious in it and almost worth the price of admission.

Bear gall-bladder poachers are a big problem in Summit National Park where Liberty Bell transfer and city slicker Nick (Steve Inwood) is now top ranger. The opening scene has a camo-clad goon kill a bear cub on park land, enraging Mama Bear. That great big bear starts her rampage, and in a flash the biggest names of all are dispatched long before “Citizen Ruth,” “Three Kings” or “Platoon” made them movie stars.

But the boss (Fletcher) has planned this big money-making rock show on park land, and doesn’t want to know about grizzlies. The show must go on.

“You have to deal with it, and don’t talk to the press!”

Nick teams up with the “bear management” specialist (Deborah Raffin of TV’s “7th Heaven”), who is all about “tranquilizing” the bear, who had to witness its cub butchered by poachers, after all. And the quartet of hunters continue to sneak around to find bears to shoot for Chinese folk medicine buyers, even though this quartet was a quintet just the day before, another early bear revenge killing.

The rangers must “call in Bouchard,” the baddest, best grizzly hunter this side of the Iron Curtain…uh Rockies.

“I yam feenished with grizzlies, monsieur,” Rhys-Davies purrs, a great bear of a man himself, picking up a tree he just chopped down, all set to save this movie with his bare hands. But Bouchard is going to take some convincing. It’s just that this is one BIG bear.

“You ain’t nev-air SEEN no beeg grizzly, Miss Bear Management!”

It’s all kind of like that, with Rhys-Davies making another argument for an honorary Oscar, lending the film what little camp value it can claim.

The rest? The bear special effect, the bizarre, bloated and not-quite-sound-synced concert sequences (which pad the running time, because that’s the footage that survived) and the mostly-off-camera killings don’t add up to much that would pass muster in a modern horror spectacle.

“Grizzly II” never comes close to “so bad its good,” although there are laughs at how bad it actually is, here and there.

Just keep your eyes peeled for VERY young character actor legends in the making Timothy Spall and Ian McNeice and your ears braced for 70 minutes of synthesizer score.

Because they don’t make’em like this any more. Thank God.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Steven Inwood, Deborah Raffin, Louise Fletcher, Dick Anthony Williams, Deborah Foreman, Timothy Spall, Ian McNeice and John Rhys-Davies — with George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen

Credits: Directed by André Szöts, script by Joan McCall and David Sheldon. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:14

So a ’67 Boss 302 Mustang, a Porsche 991 GTS Turbo, a Toyota GT86 and an ’80 Pace Car Corvette cut loose on the Nürburgring…

Did I lose you? Fine. Go over and read the reviews of “Asphalt Burning” typed by the never-drove-a-stickshift Nancys. I see a couple have posted already.

“Asphalt,” titled “Børning 3” in the Old Country because our Norwegian gearhead (girhode) friends have made three of these things, is a goof — a girhode car comedy more on the order of “Cannonball Run” than “Fast and Furious” or “Rask og Rasende” to the herring eaters.

Dumb? Sure. Funny? Sometimes it is. Cars? Fords and Chevys and Toyotas and Porsches and Lincolns, souped-up, rat-rodded or simply restored, and chased in this case by German cops in a gullwing BMW i8.

The plot is patently ridiculous. Norske street racing “legend” Roy Gundersen (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) is finally, three films in, ready to remarry. He’s had a baby with Sylvia (Kathrine Thorborg Johansen) and has the approval of his grown gearhead daughter Nina (Ida Husøy). Let’s get the gang together for a little fjordside cookout/carfest, finishing with a mock “race” to the mountaintop where Sylvia and the preacher await.

“First one to the top gets the bride!”

But there’s a German minx in the mix. Robyn (Alexandra Maria Lara) is a racecar driver from Deutschland who flirts with Roy, gets a kiss out of him, and then races her Porsche to the front of the wedding party pack to claim Sylvia at the top.

“This is not the man for you!” she barks, as she rats out the smooch and we find out that she and Sylvia have history.

The stupid script has this incident wreck the wedding, with only a proper “rematch” deciding who gets the bride, who is quite irked at Roy’s indiscretion.

The earlier films in this series were Norwegian street and road race tales. But this time, they’ll convoy through Sweden, Denmark and Germany. And then they’ll go car to car/”pink slip for pink slip” in Valhalla for Gearheads, the Nürburgring.

Many mishaps and misadventures are sure to happen along the way.

You don’t have to have seen the earlier films to pick up on the “types” on Roy’s “team.” There’s TT (Trond Halbo) who is into vintage Toyotas, for instance. My favorite is the guy they basically cast because he looks like a Norwegian version of “Top Gear” alumnus Jeremy Clarkson — grizzled “Trollhunter” veteran Otto Jespersen. He’s Nybakken, the Big Block Whisperer, a wizard with engines but a tad hapless at life.

The gags that kind of work include using a souped-up Cadillac hearse, which is mistaken for the real thing by some clueless Swedes, and adding a “Swedish Roy” and “German Roy” — both car guys — into the mix to confuse poor, unforgiving Sylvia.

The German cops bicker over F-1 drivers and take speeding down there damned seriously.

“Nobody messes with my Autobahn!” is funniest in the original German.

Lemmy Müller (Henning Baum) calls himself “The Mustang Killer of Hamburg.” You can’t pass through Germany without racing him on the docks, and yeah, he looks just like Lemmy from Motörhead.

Running gags from the earlier films (their nemesis/cop is now driving a tour bus) don’t amount to much, and you can say the same for the film.

But there are some cute bits. Norwegian 1960s pop-star turned actress Wenche Myhre gets Nybakken’s romantic attention via a song and dance number.

The funniest thing about it all is the mere fact that it exists, this silly nothing of a comedy film series built around European “AmCar” nuts, fans of American muscle back from way back when.

No, it’s not much of a movie. But if any of those conceits tickles your clutch-pedal foot, it’s good for a laugh or three. It’s for “girhodes” only.

MPA Rating: TV-14, profanity, the odd punch is thrown

Cast: Anders Baasmo Christiansen , Alexandra Maria Lara, Shelby Young, Kathrine Thorborg Johansen, Trond Halbo and Otto Jespersen

Credits: Directed by Hallvard Bræin, script by Christopher Grøndahl and Kjetil Indregard. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:40

We don’t need to be told “Gun and a Hotel Bible” is based on a play. The memory monologues, the compact two-person structure, basically a single set, the theological debates — very theatrical.

A desperate man (Bradley Gosnell) staring at the end of a failed marriage checks into an older Chicago hotel. Waiting for him there, in televangelist hair and Mormon missionary suit, is “Gid” (Daniel Floren), a Gideon’s Bible.

“Pete” has brought a gun, and a note. He’s come to the hotel where Cindy (Mia Marcon) has her Friday night assignations. What will he do with it? Can Gid talk him out of it?

Gid is perpetually upbeat, even though he’s been eyewitness to a long “life” of shenanigans, sadness and tragedy, just in this room.

“Don’t most hotels at least have the courtesy to leave you in the drawer? Jesus Christ!”

“LANguage!”

But sure, he’s been in that drawer for decades, but he’s been yanked out, here and there — lost a page to “a guy who needed paper to roll a joint. ‘Judges.’ Ironically.”

“Is Reagan still president? Is Batman still a thing?”

Word that the Cubs won the World Series makes Gid giddy.

Telling him that he missed out on the mass appeal “Satanic” Pokemon craze is a great to get Gid’s goat.

But this is mostly about the weightier stuff. Pete’s plans with that gun give the night and their debates urgency. “God becoming flesh,” taking the challenge of finding heavenly immorality in the Good Book and winning it with a quick flip to “Leviticus,” a lapsed “believer” bickering with “God works through me. I’m scripture, for God’s sake!”

Gid summons up the most popular verses in trying to reach Pete. “Already heard it.” And the distraught man unravels as the straws both grasp at are used up.

The acting is polished, the banter quick and cutting, and occasionally funny. “Gun and a Hotel Bible” was co-directed by the fellow who gave us Drew Barrymore’s “Never Been Kissed,” and Raja Gosnell (Whos’ Bradley’s daddy?) and Alicia Joy LeBlanc keep their camera close, putting the exchanges in our faces. A couple of sequences nicely fade up the lights on a foreground or background moment — a cinematic effect. borrowed from theater.

It’s a just a smidge edgier than your average faith-based film, but just as simplistic. And it never quite lets you forget its stagebound origins.

About the best you can say about it is that “Gun and a Hotel Bible” is that it isn’t quite up to the “worst directors of all time” infamy of Raja Gosnell’s resume (per IMDb.com), a guy who used to put his son Bradley in “Scooby-doo” and “Show Dogs” and other notably awful kids movies, back in the day.

MPA Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Bradley Gosnell, Daniel Floren, Mia Marcon

Credits: Directed by  Raja Gosnell, Alicia Joy LeBlanc, script by Bradley Gosnell, Daniel Floren, based on their play. A Freestyle release.

Running time: :58

“Redemption Day” is a hostage thriller with a fixed deadline, a threatened beheading and the celebrated soldier married to the hostage hellbent on fighting his way to get to her.

“My cause is worthy of my death.“

It has a rugged lead (Gary Dourdan) playing a combat vet battling personal demons and terrorists, a wild-eyed villain (Samy Naceri) and Andy Garcia and Martin Donovan as smirking bureaucrats who might help but are more likely to hinder the hero’s plans.

The action beats are by-the-book, the dialogue is straight out of four hundred earlier thrillers. “You speak English?” “I learn from American movies.” Lots of slapping and shouting and “LOOK at me when I talk to you!”

The good guys? “Stay with me! Don’t die on me!”

What it lacks is urgency, that heedless sense that the clock is ticking down and desperate measures are called for. It saunters along, giving the impression that one and all are not that concerned about the time, the stakes, any of this. It’s a strictly low-energy affair.

Captain Paxton was tested on a humanitarian mission ambushed in Syria. Flashbacks to that opening scene, which made his name, made him famous and yet haunts his dreams, are scattered through “Redemption Day.” Not that they seem to slow down our warrior. Not that there’s real “redemption” called for.

Wife Kate (Serinda Swan) is an archeologist who heads to Morocco to start a dig in a lost city covered by the desert. But the dig is on the border with ever-unstable Algeria, and yes, she’s taken and others are killed.

Garcia’s cigar-smoking U.S. ambassador and intelligence official Donovan have a leisurely chat about what to do. Back in the states, Paxton is fielding calls from a French Moroccan comrade-in-arms (Brice Bexter), kissing his teen daughter goodbye and getting advice from his veteran/boxing trainer dad (Ernie Hudson) as he packs his bags.

We go more than an hour into the film before our super-chill hero, Captain Brad Paxton, half-whispers “Let’s get this party started.” But considering he’s trying to save his wife, it’d be nice if Mr. “Rogue Assets” put a little more into that.

Dourdan, of TV’s “CSI” and “First Wives Club” is right on the cusp of adequate in action hero mode. He doesn’t give us a sense of struggle, makes it all look rehearsed. “Professional soldier” is one thing. But you’ve got to give us a little something to work with, a little edge, sass, charisma — SOMEthing.

Moroccan producer (French TV’s “The Bureau”) turned director Hicham Hajji has no sense of pace, and while he’s got “names” on board, he doesn’t give them much to chew on. The script has these half-hearted efforts to shoehorn third-act twists and political messaging into the picture, but they’re as a limp and obvious as one actor’s feigned southern drawl in the finale.

And there are also these random “actors” who seem joltingly inserted into the picture — like favors being repaid to the producer. A rotund, jeans-and-chains clad DJ Khaled look-alike multi-lingual (French and Arabic) “Moroccan” intel whiz who does all his laptop computing with his shades on, this mysterious Western woman popping up for a close-up or two, relatives of a producer, or investors?

A couple of decent firefights, some top-notch drone shots of assorted military and civilian desert dirt track convoys and a good villain is about all there is to recommend the mistitled “Redemption Day.”

MPA Rating: R for violence and language

Cast:  Gary Dourdan, Serinda Swan, Ernie Hudson, Samy Naceri, Martin Donovan, Brice Bexter and Andy Garcia

Credits: Directed by  Hicham Hajji, script by Sam Chouia, Lemore Syvan and  Hicham Hajji. A Saban release.

Running time: 1:39

The melancholy romance “Elsewhere” is like that endless home improvement project that starts with so much promise, but that your contractor never quite gets up the gumption to finish.

That would be the perfect analogy, except “Elsewhere” doesn’t irritate you — exasperate yes — and doesn’t leave you feeling used and broke when all is said and done.

“Perfect analogy” because it’s about a house. Bruno built it, lived in it with his wife. And then she died, and her rich you-know-what-heel dad takes the land back, and the house that stands on it.

We figure out a few minutes in that Lydia (Kathleen Munroe) died a couple of years ago. That opening scene surprise birthday party for Bruno, played by Aden Young of TV’s “Reckoning?” Not nearly as tactless/heartless as it might seem. His Dad’s (Beau Bridges) toast? Maybe.

“He was loyal to his wife like a DOG!”

Bruno’s an architect and a builder who’s been in a near stupor since losing Lydia. He’s “morose,” about to lose his job, and then he’s evicted. Dad is understanding, but Mom (Jacki Weaver) isn’t.

His therapeutic visits back to the woodsy, seaside Pacific Northwest house he built for lydia, to break in and clean and do “maintenance,” end when it sells. And he can’t bring himself to tell new owner Marie (Parker Posey) that he built it and lost the woman he loved while living there, and then had it taken from him.

Which is how he becomes her contractor for “renovations” which Bruno is loathe to carry out. The house is a veritable shrine to his loss, even the bad plumbing.

“I’ve never met some an OPINIONATED contractor!”

It’ll never work out, especially if his stoner-pal (Ken Jeong) can line him up with “my cousin the lawyer” (Ray Abruzzo) to sue and try and get his house back.

Young gives a deft, unmoored and sad performance, and truthfully he’s better than the movie surrounding him.

Posey is that rare actress who can’t miss, Bridges has the soft-hearted Dad thing down. Weaver? She’s here for a couple of cutesy bits and one killer, withering put-down.

We’re treated to one tender moment — not with Young’s official leading lady — and a few half-hearted jokes, many of them manhandled by Jeong. He, like Weaver, is here for a big speech which he manages with skill.

Costa Rican writer-director Hernan Jimenez (“About Us”) makes a movie that closely mirrors Bruno’s disheartened mopiness. The odd spark and eccentric touch — a character raising a family in a travel trailer — is lost in a lot of recycled bits and obvious gags, pitfalls or obstacles.

It teeters unsatisfyingly between forlorn and wistful. Looking for something more? You’ll have to find that “Elsewhere.”

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

Cast: Aden Young, Parker Posey, Ken Jeong, Jacki Weaver and Beau Bridges

Credits: Scripted and directed by Hernan Jimenez. A Freestyle release, on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:38