Movie Nation

Slick, silly and production-designed to death, “Jewel Thief” is a Netflix franchise starter that’s cartoonish enough to be a non-starter.

“The Heist Begins” is about an all-knowing, infallible thief (Saif Ali Khan) blackmailed into stealing a nine-year-old’s idea of what a giant red diamond would look like for a murderous “gentleman” gangster Rajan (Jaideep Ahlawat) who likes to “paint” wall-hangings with the blood of those who cross him.

Our thief is chased around the globe (we meet him in Budapest) by a crack cop (Kunal Kapoor) whose inept underlings often let Mr. Sticky Fingers get away. Not that thief Rehan hasn’t planned to fall into their clutches, from time to time, when it suits his purposes.

The plot concerns the battle of wits between thief Rehan and the “gentleman” gangster Rajan over the big heist they have to collaborate on.

The Red Sun is an African diamond on display at an Indian museum. Rajan has threatened Rehan’s do-gooder doctor father to coerce him into this theft. Rehan, forced to move into the murderer’s mansion to plan (not really) the crime, has an eye for the killer’s moll, the fetching painter Farah (Nikita Dutta).

I’ll “steal you AND the Red Sun,” he promises.

Okeydokey.

The dull, underplotted heists and attempted heists are facilitated by the usual magical gadgets and a blue-haired hacker (Meenal Sahu), who only shows up in the film when she’s needed.

The fight choreography is about as believable as everything else in this shiny, luridly-lit bubble of affluence.

The threats are unintentionally comical — “You have three days to go, and just one life!”

It’s no surprise that this is an Anglo-Indian production, with co-writers and co-directors from different worlds. “Jewel Thief” is like a not-remotely-funny parody of an Indian action film, a heist picture that’s not serious enough, a caper comedy that’s too bloody bloody to be that.

The tired tropes and cliches saunter by as our co-directors struggle to make every thing pretty enough to pause over, rather than fret over pacing, suspense, etc.

But kudos to one and all for getting Netflix to buy the pitch, to the production designers who showcase lots of upscale clothes and settings and to director of photography Jishnu Bhattacharjee for lighting the living daylights out of every setting until it’s neon-tinted, fashion model shoot perfect.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, smoking, sexual situations, some profanity

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, Nikita Dutta,
Meenal Sahu and Kunal Kapoor

Credits: Directed by Robbie Grewal and Kookie Gulati, scripted by Sumit Arora and David Logan. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:56

Animation director Vincent Parannaud did the adult and masterful “Persepolis,” one of the best animated films of the new millenium.

Here, he’s aiming for a younger demo with a visually arresting tale of a child lost in enchanted woods, trying to remember what his sickly Granny said about listening “to your inner voice” in a forest where stepping on specific mushrooms produces the grandest fart noises.

June 24 Shout! Studios (Shout! Kids) releases this one.

Ferzan Özpetek, director of “Loose Cannons” and the recent Netflix romance “Nuovo Olimpo” rounded up a lot of famous Italian actresses for this movie about movie making — making a ’70s period piece and obsessing about what the ladies will be wearing.

Film at Lincoln Center has this one in early June. It’s set for wide release this fall.

Kazuya Shiraishi’s “11 Rebels” is an often entertaining Samurai thriller that wallows in the conventions and tropes of the genre.

The conventions of Samurai thrillers and American Westerns cross-polinated so long ago that it’s hard to remember which culture’s action pictures invented what. “Rebels” has noble sacrifice and “official” treachery, a motley collection of outcasts battling impossible odds via swordplay and gunplay and that hoariest of cliches, “Let’s solve our problems with explosives.”

Hell, if it worked in “Rio Bravo” and scores of lesser American “horse operas,” which not in feudal Japan?

The tale is loosely inspired by events of the Boshin War, the brief 19th century conflict in which the Emperor asserted primacy over a coalition of isolationist shogunates and Japan joined the more modern West by virtue of a conflict that featured breech loading artillery, Gatling guns and samurai swords.

If you’re a Western filmgoer who thinks “Last Samurai” era, you’re not far off.

Imperial troops are menacing assorted domains, among them the Shibata clan, struggling to “pick the winning horse” in the conflict between Emperor and “The Coalition.”

A plan emerges to defend a mountain pass with a bridge long enough for negotiations to pick a side to ally with, and thus save the capital city of the Shibata from assault. As they’ll be conscripting troops to lend to whichever side demands them in the meantime, that pass will have to be defended by a few samurai, and some convicted murders.

The dashing Takayuki Yamada is Masa, a condemned man waiting for his head-sawn-off execution for stabbing the Shibata samurai who raped his wife.

The “Eleven” here include a defrocked priest, the madman Noro (Takara Sakumoto), a lad (Amane Okayama) charged with trying to flee to Russia to learn Western medicine, an Old Samurai (Chikara Motoyama), a prostitute (Kano Ichiki) and a hulking mass murderer (sumo-turned-actor Ryôta Oyanagi) who bellows out his rising body count as he slaughters.

A handful of samurai led by Irie (Shûhei Nomura) and Heishiro (Taiga Nakano) are put in charge of holding this pass and bridge until they get word that the town is safe or has switched sides or whatever.

If just one convict flees, they all lose the pardons they will be granted for undertaking this “suicide” mission. Guess which convict is most determined to run off? That would be the guy who killed a Shibata for raping his wife.

There are “Seven Samurai/Dirty Dozen” plot elements and sequences here, some of which are so over-familiar as to be merely mentioned or covered in a brief (fix up the ruined fort) montage.

The script includes intertitles to ID assorted shakers and movers among the real figures on the periphery of this “last stand.” But actual character names are passed on grudgingly, so apologies for leaving half the “11” out.

But the reason B-movies like this still play is the tried and true plot points that go down like comfort food to action fans. Characters get spotlight moments swinging their blades and trying to light their matchlocks (generations of firearms are featured) in the rain, living and perhaps even forming a brotherhood (with one sister) as they fate their fates.

The gimmicks of the plot take the form of somebody who used to work with the family fireworks business and somebody who recognizes what “black water” is and how it could aid the defense of the pass.

The fights are furious and bloody. Don’t get too attached to anybody. Or any body part.

The cliches and the character clutter — Who ARE the eleven and who are samurai? — dampen the fun as much as rain dampens gunpowder here. But “11 Rebels,” like “13 Ronin” or “Seven Samurai,” is an action pic that recognizes there’s safety in numbers. That way, not everybody has to make the “noble sacrifice.” Because we always want somebody around for the finale. .

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, dismemberments, beheadings, etc.

Cast: Takayuki Yamada, Taiga Nakano, Kano Ichiki, Shûhei Nomura, Riho Sayasi, Ukon Onowe, Yûya Matsuura, Chikara Motoyama, Takuma Otoo, Amane Okayama, Sadao Abe, Ryôta Oyanagi, Takara Sakumotoi and Shûhei Nomura.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kazuya Shiraishi, scripted by Kazuo Kasahara and Jun’ya Ikegami. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:00

A creepy missing son indie thriller that Paramount/Republic picked up, this one rolls out June 20.

She’s “mad,” quite mad — articulate, but unfiltered, with few acquired life skills and few options and “Taming of the Shrew” furious over that.

He’s the village or neighborhood “idiot,” who “got turned down” by every possible bride he asked, other than her. Or her family, which was sure to be relieved in getting rid of her.

With the simplest tasks like meal prep, sobriety, marital consummation and managing a budget beyond them, can this marriage be saved? Or, when the stop-motion-animated zombie goats and birds arrive, can it even be survived?

“Sister Midnight” is a gleefully dark and twisted Indian domestic comedy, a deadpan absurdist farce with witchcraft whisked in to the domestic disharmony of it all, a Mumbai story set to the music of Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Holly, The Stooges and…Marty Robbins?

Radhika Apte (“Mrs. Undercover”) is Uma, who rides the train into the city with the husband she hasn’t seen since they were eight, seemingly resigned to her fate living in a street-level one-room hovel and an arranged marriage that might have been the best either her family, or Gopal’s (Ashok Pathak) could manage.

But when disrobes and he bolts, only to return drunk much later, she ducks out herself.

Uma is not your average Indian bride. She smokes like a chimney and curses like Robert Carlyle in “Trainspotting.”

She can’t cook, so her neighbor (Chhaya Kadam) gives her a lesson and one hard and fast rule.

“Throw in enough chili and salt and they’ll eat anything,” (in Hindu with English subtitles).

She can’t manage money and can’t hold her tongue when her new husband — who would rather drink than consummate the marriage — is dismayed at all she cannot do.

“I can’t figure out if you’re just dumb, or just that selfish!”

But as she storms out for a smoke or an idea, she wanders far enough to get a job at a shipping company across town. Can she at least clean the offices, after hours?

“Oh sure. I’m a domestic GODDESS.”

With the help of that neighbor, Sheetal, who becomes her co-conspirator, and of the older and helpful but inscrutable elevator operator (Subhash Chandra) at work, perhaps Uma can make a go of this adult life/married living thing.

But that’s the thing about madness in the movies. It comes and goes, but never really “goes.”

The edgiest Indian cinema has always been filmed by expats, and the London-based Karan Kadhari seasons his debut feature with the sorts of things Indian cinema avoids — nudity, sex, dismemberment and profanity included.

This working poor world is something you survive and resign yourself to. Financial or social advancement never cross anyone’s mind.

A running gag — strangers on the street and even prostitutes stop Uma and ask her for her “whitening” regimen (Snow Queen Whitening Cream, she never ever tells them). But in Uma’s deranged mind, there may be other reasons she’s “Twilight” pale.

Apte is an amusing fury in this role, occasionally even inviting sympathy as she struggles to fit in to a world more tolerant of her fairer skin than her mental state and personal struggles.

Kandhari’s script makes her an untameable “shrew” whose madness can only be managed in a marriage that can only be endured unless coming to an “understanding,” or fate intervenes.

“Sister Midnight” is barely characterizable as a dark farce, challenging to get into until you learn to surf its loopy “Just go with it” vibe. But the deadpan laughs land, from Uma’s endless dismay at her plight to every wholly unexpected needle drop on the score — from The Band to T-Rex. And Apte is the riveting center of it all, making sense out of nonsense, and when she can’t, just bluffing and bullying her unfiltered way towards enlightenment, or something just short of it.

Rating: unrated, violence, sex, nudity, smoking

Cast: Radhika Apte, Ashok Pathak, Subhash Chandra and Chhaya Kadam

Credits: Scripted and directed by Karan Kandhari. A Magnolia/Magnet release.

Running time: 1:47