Director Matthew López makes an impressive feature debut with “Red, White & Royal Blue,” a love story that skillfully blends the familiar beats of a classic movie romance with the distinctive details of two of the world’s most public young men trying to keep their relationship private. Adapted from Casey McQuiston’s best-selling book, the film is about a British prince and the son of the President of the United States. Both want to keep the relationship secret to protect their privacy, but protecting their families from controversy is even more important to them.

Before that, we have the part we go to movies to see, where initial hostility turns to grudging respect, then some flirty banter, and then a growing recognition that they are deeply in love. Alex Clarmont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) is the son of President Ellen Clarmont (Uma Thurman) and Congressman Oscar Diaz (Clifton Collins Jr.). He is passionate about politics but confined to ceremonial assignments, like escorting Nora, the granddaughter of the US Vice President (a charming Rachel Hilson), to the wedding of the grandson of the King of England and next in line to the throne. Alex is annoyed to be relegated to such a photo-op of an event, and does not want to see the groom’s brother, Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine). We will find out later why they dislike one another. 

They get into an embarrassing mess (literally) at the wedding reception. In international relations, it seems important to show the world that the two young men are great friends. It’s a classic rom-com set-up, but this is a more ambitious story. López and his gifted cast deftly shift the tone from near slapstick to touching drama. 

The cast is refreshingly diverse, with an understated, almost casual, natural sense that this is just the world these characters live in. Each supporting character is comfortable with who they are, and they do not feel they need to mute their accents or otherwise “blend in.” It becomes a delicately handled plot point when Alex interacts with a Hispanic reporter, always looking for an edge. We see it clearly in how the journalist speaks to Alex in Spanish to assume a kind of kinship and intimacy that Alex parries uncomfortably. The always-terrific Collins as Oscar has a lovely scene showing his son he supports his love for Henry. Oscar briefly references the challenges he and Ellen faced, implying that coming from different cultures made people skeptical about their future. 

These small, careful touches give what otherwise could be a glossy but bland Hallmark-style film some texture, and López’s background in musical theater gives him a good sense of the rhythm of storytelling. A New Year’s Eve party scene is edited with wit and style by Kristina Hetherington and Nick Moore. And a scene when the still-antagonistic couple is stuck in a literal closet is just the right mix of claustrophobic discomfort, a growing realization of their attraction, and, even more surprising, their mutual respect. 

Impressively, the film allows its racially, culturally, and nationally diverse characters to bypass the code-switching that real-life and fictional characters often do to make others around them more comfortable. In that spirit, it grants Alex and Henry frankness in depicting their relationship, including their sexual relationship, which is explicit but portrayed with respect for its increasing intimacy. Alex is bisexual. Henry is gay. They both struggle with what that means for their very public families, but they know who they are, and when they let themselves, they know what they wish for their lives as a couple.

Still, it is a fairy tale, so there are plot contrivances that are just too convenient. But the shimmering sweetness between Perez and Galitzine supports the very willing suspension of disbelief, and that’s what happily ever after is all about. 

Now playing on Prime Video.

At this point, there isn’t a day that passes without artificial intelligence being at the top of relevant headlines. There’s a constant volley between news of new AI innovation and articles warning or announcing the ways corporations are utilizing the technology to replace humans. While we’re already accustomed to Siri and Alexa, the industry seems to be pivoting away from personal convenience and into employment infringement and human replacement. Sophie Barthes’ new feature, “The Pod Generation” takes a simple stance on this development: it’s bad.

Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are a married couple living in the not-so-distant future. Rachel is an ambitious employee at her tech company, the breadwinner of the couple. Alvy is a passionate botanist, teaching the uninterested youth about nature while grasping onto the traditionalism of connecting with the physical world rather than the technological one. 

The world has moved on, preferring nature pods within homes, AI therapists, and artificial wombs. As Rachel and Alvy decide to have a child, to leave Rachel’s work and body unaffected by pregnancy, they opt for the sought-after Womb Center, a service of tech giant Pegasus that provides the wealthy with detachable pods to grow their babies. Yet throughout the process, Alvy and Rachel’s philosophies regarding the technology butt heads. 

“The Pod Generation” is thoughtful and timely but flat. It’s an opaque expression of an overtly simple thesis. As AI advances, humans distance themselves from the natural world, possessing a penchant for convenience over connection. Rachel and Alvy are stark foils of one another, so much so that neither truly feels like a natural character. Every line in the script feels written blatantly intended to get the point across, to drive home a sentiment. In turn, every conversation is forced. 

Barthes’ film does make a valiant effort to showcase technological progression versus intervention across the entire culture of this new world, from domestic squabbles to capitalist nightmare characters like Linda (Rosalie Craig), the head woman in charge of the Womb Center. Humanity plummets with over-commercialization and detachment in compassionate roles like motherhood and therapy. 

Pegasus’ pseudo-feminist rhetoric that the pods save women from job interference and the oh-so-horrifying bodily changes is another thoughtful inclusion showing that capitalism and humanity never intersect. However, these ideas are explored with a stark script rather than emotional expression, so every statement is absorbed intellectually but never emotionally. The tension between Rachel and Alvy is inauthentic, like a prop for a main idea rather than an empathetic cornerstone it posits to be.

Clarke and Ejiofor are as dejected as the film itself. Though the script doesn’t afford them much to work with other than a checklist of dialogue that seems to check that the audience is grasping the premise incessantly, no chemistry between them would lead us to believe they’re a couple, even with philosophical issues aside. 

“The Pod Generation” trucks forward like a long hike, with wide-eyed introductory ambition that quickly turns to a tired drag to the finish line. The set design and cinematography are the film’s only grounding aspects. This new but near world has a dystopian beauty in its landscape, but it doesn’t save the film from being a middling attempt at a pointed social dossier. Barthes’ film has potential but simply feels like an idea in its early stages. 

Now playing in theaters. 

Dazzlingly impressive from a technical perspective but frustratingly dull from a narrative one, “Medusa Deluxe” is an ambitious but uneven experience.

The feature filmmaking debut from British writer/director Thomas Hardiman is high on style but short on thrills, which is unfortunate given that it’s a murder mystery set in the wild world of competitive hairdressing. One of the stylists, Mosca, has been scalped during preparations for the big show; the others sit backstage in their respective dressing rooms, worrying and gossiping with their shocked models and speculating who among them might have been the killer.

It’s already a potentially juicy premise. But then Hardiman has chosen to tell this story in a single take, or rather to create the sensation that we’re watching a single take, which is actually a series of very long takes seamlessly stitched together. Working with expert cinematographer Robbie Ryan—whose eclectic filmography ranges from the crisp black-and-white of “C’mon C’mon” to his lavish, Oscar-nominated work on “The Favourite”—Hardiman glides effortlessly through hallways and up and down stairways. “Medusa Deluxe” feels like it has a lot of “Birdman” in its DNA with its lengthy Steadicam shots inside the mundane nooks of a theatrical setting and its sporadic treks to the sidewalks outside. The frequent mirror avoidance is especially clever, given how many scenes feature characters talking as they ponder their reflections in dressing rooms and bathrooms. And there’s one truly spectacular “how’d-they-do-that?” sequence at the film’s climax that made me rewind and rewatch a couple of times just to marvel at its choreography and pacing.

But beneath all the visual prowess, there is an actual story with actual characters, all of which is actually quite boring.

We begin with the volatile Cleve (a ferocious Clare Perkins), who delivers an extended rant as she arranges a frothy Georgian Fontange on the woman sitting before her. Soon, the camera follows a model named Inez (Kae Alexander) as she navigates the hallways with a towering pile of stick-straight, rainbow-hued tresses atop her head. Eventually, we spend time with the quiet security guard, Gac (Heider Ali), who asks to borrow some wipes to clean the blood off his locker. Flashy, freaked-out Rene (Darrell D’Silva), the show’s organizer, shares a vape with Gac as he debates what to do next. Rene must also contend with Angel (Luke Pasqualino), Mosca’s devastated partner and the co-father of their infant son, Pablo. (Introducing a baby in a Bjorn adds yet another degree of difficulty to the already complex mix, and boy, is he ever cute.)

And so on until we’ve met all the players, heard their stories, and considered their possible degrees of culpability. But regardless of their backgrounds and motivations, gripes and lies, a single factor unifies everyone: There’s nothing to them. Each character gets a trait or two, and quite often, they deliver their lines in such a uniformly understated way it’s hard to feel engaged in what they’re saying, much less wonder whether any of them could have been the killer. Given the gruesomeness of the attack and the flamboyant nature of the setting, “Medusa Deluxe” should be a lot more exciting. Despite the muscular camerawork and some inspired transitions, the overall pacing is slow. And the underlying crime going on within this crime scene isn’t especially intriguing, either.

Still, the percussive score from British electronic musician Koreless adds tension (there’s a cool back-and-forth effect involving a comb at a key moment). And, of course, the hair designs in “Medusa Deluxe” are structural marvels to behold. But it’s not enough to keep this whodunit from becoming a “Who cares?”

Now playing in select theaters and available on VOD. 

When William Richert’s “Winter Kills” was originally released in 1979, it proved to be so wild and audacious in how it mined our collective memories of one of the darkest, most defining moments of 20th-century American history–and presented them through a blackly comedic prism so far ahead of its time–that the few audiences that turned up could hardly believe what they were seeing. This adaptation of Richard Condon’s novel returns to theaters in a newly restored version under the aegis of Quentin Tarantino, and it has not lost an iota of its power to shock, amuse, and simultaneously perplex viewers. If anything, it seems to have grown even bolder with age in its willingness to take on sacred cows in the craziest manner imaginable. To look at “Winter Kills” now, it seems more obvious than ever that this is indeed one of the great unsung American films of that era and one thoroughly deserving of rediscovery.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In 1960, President Timothy Kegan, the handsome and popular scion of an enormously rich and powerful family, was assassinated by a sniper during a visit to Philadelphia. A federal commission convened to investigate the crime and concluded that it was the work of a lone gunman named Willie Arnold, who was killed a couple of days later while in police custody by a nightclub owner named Joe Diamond with alleged ties to Cuba and the Mob. While this conclusion raised many questions, it would be enough for many people, including Nick Kegan (Jeff Bridges), Timothy’s younger half-brother and the eventual heir to the entire Kegan dynasty.

Therefore, you can imagine his surprise when family factotum Keifetz (Richard Boone) arrives on the oil tanker Nick is currently working on with a nearly-dead man who claims he was one of two men who were hired to do the shooting and set up Arnold as a patsy, even offering up the Philadelphia location of where he stashed the rifle that did the deed. Nick assumes that the guy is a crackpot, but when he travels to Philadelphia, he finds the hidden rifle, although he winds up losing it in the ensuing confusion. He returns home to his family’s vast California compound to visit his estranged father, Pa Kegan (John Huston), and tell him of this discovery. Although initially dismissive, Pa agrees to help Nick uncover the apparent conspiracy behind Timothy’s murder and its subsequent cover-up, offering the use of the vast Kegan empire to help him along the way.

The rest of the film follows Nick as he embarks on his search for the truth, which results in several encounters with people who offer him information—often in direct contradiction to what he has already been told—and who, more often than not, seem to end up dead soon afterward. These encounters include Z.K. Dawson (Sterling Hayden), a personal and political rival of the Kegan family who gives Nick some information before chasing him off his property with a fully-armed tank, a corrupt Philadelphia cop (Michael Thoma) who recounts the deal reputedly made between high-level mobster “Gameboy” Baker (Ralph Meeker) and Joe Diamond (Eli Wallach), and John Cerruti (Anthony Perkins), the man behind the Kegan vast information network and who knows where all the bodies are buried, even the ones still at least temporarily alive. Assisting Nick somewhat in his pursuit of the truth is Yvette (Belinda Bauer), an enigmatic magazine editor who agrees to use her resources to help him pursue leads—assuming she is actually who she claims to be.

Although shot through with Condon’s trademark sense of dark humor, Condon’s original novel recounted this story in a mostly straightforward and serious manner. But in adapting it to the screen, first-time filmmaker Richert (who would only direct two more features, “The American Success Company” [1980] and “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon” [1988] and died in 2022) elected to shift it into a more overtly comedic mode, presuming that doing it as satire might make it somewhat more palatable to audiences. This approach may not have succeeded in terms of financial gain, but it does make the film work in a way it might not have had it been done more somberly. The ramshackle, wild-goose-chase-style plotting gives the film an almost revue-style feeling (one oddly reminiscent of the plot thread in Brian De Palma’s cult comedy “Greetings” involving the conspiracy nut played by Gerrit Graham) that weirdly fits the material at hand. “Winter Kills” does a highly impressive job of milking laughs out of a subject that most people might not find to be that funny (especially back in 1979) while still touching on the disillusion felt by many, both then and now, regarding the institutions they had been raised to believe in.

Although the episodic nature of the film may prove frustrating and confusing at times, it does offer up any number of brilliantly staged and often hilarious sequences: the quietly shocking aftermath of the rifle discovery; Nick riding a horse in the middle of nowhere so that he can safely shout “You stink, Pa!”; Yvette’s inventive circumnavigation of a snooty restaurant’s rules about women in trousers; the scene where Cerruti (who, as performed by Perkins, suggests what might have resulted if his character from “The Trial” had been working for the other side) calmly recounts a massive amount of exposition despite having just had both arms broken; and the moment when Pa advises Nick to put money into South America. The film is also aided by a fairly elaborate cast (besides those already mentioned, it also finds parts for familiar faces like Toshiro Mifune and Dorothy Malone and cult favorites like Joe Spinell to none other than Elizabeth Taylor in a silent but highly memorable unbilled cameo) who are all clearly having a lot of fun, especially Huston (who would go on to successfully adapt another Condon novel with his late-period masterwork “Prizzi’s Honor”), whose work here may outdo even his turn in “Chinatown” in how it personifies power and corruption in its most curdled form.

Unlike “The Manchurian Candidate,” which languished in obscurity for years after being withdrawn from distribution before returning to view in 1988 only to be enshrined as an American classic, “Winter Kills” is unlikely ever to have received a similar embrace. I adore the film, but even I recognize it is just too weird and messy and disreputable in most regards, even today, ever to achieve even a trace amount of that recognition. And yet, no matter how many times I have seen it, I remain consistently knocked out by its wit, courage, and audacity. I can only hope that at least some who come to check out this long-overdue re-release, even if it’s due entirely to the Tarantino imprimatur, will feel the same way.

Now playing in select theaters. 

Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s poetic documentary “King Coal” is a lyrical tribute to the place she calls home. Filmed in Central Appalachia—including the director’s home state of West Virginia—“King Coal” moves beyond shallow impressions of the region with a real love for her neighbors and prodding questions about what it means to identify with an industry that has harmed and exploited generations of families. 

Spoken about like a fallen monarch, the coal industry’s history and influence are discussed through voice-over and residents’ stories. Today, we find King Coal in a less illustrious state, but it still permeates the culture like black coal dust floating in the air. There are scenes of runners hit with handfuls of coal dust for fun, a coal drop to stand in for the Times Square New Year’s ball drop, a miner showing a piece of coal to a classroom, a coal shoveling exhibition, a coal-centric pageant where beautiful young contestants dedicate their dance performances to the miners who’ve lost their lives, and a local sports teams named the Miners. But the view of coal is much murkier than that, both physically when McMillion Sheldon takes her camera into the mines and when exploring the harmful legacy of how coal companies discriminated against nonwhite miners, exploiting workers to the point of fighting back by unionizing, and where plenty still lose their lives today. 

Gone are the days when mining companies tried showing off their employees’ white picket fences in the 1930s as a source of pride and a sign of upward mobility. Now, coal brings up a mix of emotions: an unmistakable pride in surviving the deadly conditions of working in a mine, bitter memories of how the companies have treated miners, early deaths, or, more horrifically, whispered stories of gruesome job accidents that maim or kill poor workers deep below the surface. Whatever the feeling, old miners, like the narrator’s grandfather, are still attuned to the changes in noises and vibrations around them, a sense they developed to survive in the mines. They carry those memories in their bodies like no one else can. 

Outside the mines, acres and acres of earth make for a gorgeous canvas for McMillion Sheldon, her husband, and cinematographer Curren Sheldon. They film the land in such a way as to make the ground feel mystical—enchanted green forests with thick carpet-like moss, fluffy white snow as far as the eye can see, the multicolor splendor of fall and crunchy leaves rattling in the wind, and the rainy dewiness of spring in its hazy splendor. Throughout the film, we follow a young girl who does not yet know of all of coal’s complexities, but she’s well aware of its prominence on school trips and class projects. She and another young girl dance and play together against the landscape, a freeing innocence that allows them to skip along dirt roads or lay out on a bed of moss. Her movement through the film, choreographed by the talented dancer and filmmaker Celia Rowlson Hall, is part of McMillion Sheldon’s tribute to the region as if the young girl was similarly inspired by her world’s beauty, wonder, and complications. 

In a sense, “King Coal” feels like a eulogy for a difficult relative, one who brought people together but burned almost as many bridges as they made. McMillion Sheldon, who also wrote “King Coal,” begins the film with a funeral procession walking along a dirt road along rolling green hills that could have doubled for Ireland were it not the pointy tips of mountains among foggy clouds behind them. Her narration speaks of the land as “a place of mountains and myths” and is open about its many contradictions. When speaking of her childhood, she said of the all-mighty hold coal had on those around her, “I remember learning that if I said anything bad about the King, I was betraying my loved ones.” After taking a winding road through history and memories, it all builds to her final question: “Who are you without a king?” What will they rally around and celebrate instead? The answer lives with the survivors, those who have yet to write their history.

Now playing in theaters.

The Icelandic/German conspiracy thriller “Operation Napoleon” would be as comforting as its airport thriller plot if it weren’t also baggy, joyless, and spiritually depleting. Based on a novel by best-selling author Arnaldur Indridason (Jar City, Reykjavik Nights), “Operation Napoleon” has everything that your dad probably loves about late-period Clive Cussler and mid-period Robert Ludlum yarns, including evil CIA agents, dramatically inert monologues about hidden treasure, and a crack team of misfits who are being stalked by a ballcap-wearing professional assassin. The plot congeals soon after a group of Icelandic explorers discovers a German WWII spy plane. They’re then attacked by a mysterious group of Americans led by a smiling murderer with a pencil. This scenario doesn’t develop further, but the Americans do chase around the sister of the Icelandic team’s leader. Two hours later, a cliffhanger ending stops “Operation Napoleon” before the movie starts.

To be fair, the makers of this pulpy, if too dry, action-adventure seem to know what they’re doing, or at least where to stick jokes, character development, and perfunctory bloodletting. They also seem to have very literally translated a novel to a visual medium without consideration for how listless, flat, and charmless this globe-trotting chase movie might now look. Case in point: when we first meet Kristin (Vivian Olafsdottir), she’s meticulously dressing down Runolfur (Hjortur Johann Jonsson), a lazy mansplaining colleague, using Powerpoint-style slides that reveal exactly how Runolfur’s tried to sell “old wine in new bottles,” according to Kristin.

We also see Kristin sharing a pseudo-playful conversation with her explorer brother Elias (Atli Oskar Fjalarsson) right before he and his team are approached by smiling Julie Ratoff (Adesuwa Oni) and her armed goons. Elias hastily texts Kristin some video footage of the Nazi plane that he and his hapless companions have stumbled upon. Kristin must soon also deal with Julie, who kills one of Elias’ friends with a pencil and then, in a later scene, tortures someone else with a pencil.

Elias and Kristin’s pre-Julie conversation checks off some dramatic boxes, but in such basic ways that you can’t help but wish that the screenwriters had either rewritten or tried a new approach to this establishing scene. They kid around with each other and talk about their stillborn love lives as if they were distractedly working their way through a checklist of social prompts. Then Julie shows up, and her smile is as unconvincing as Oni’s performance. She asks for Elias and his team’s contact information, and the tension is so hilariously slack that the by-the-numbers bloodletting that follows seems even more underwhelming.

Julie works for the icy CIA agent William Carr (Iain Glen), whom we know is a bad man since, in his first scene, he plays with his grandchildren. William also employs Simon (Wotan Wilke Mohring), a sneaky but laughably conspicuous killer who follows Kristin around Iceland but somehow fails to kill her, and Steve (Jack Fox), her well-read will-they/won’t-they companion. Simon kills and/or roughs up some bystanders, but most of his character-defining aggression, like Julie’s pencil trick, happens off-screen.

Meanwhile, Kristin and Steve learn more about the plane Elias and his friends stumbled upon. Eventually, gentle giant Einar (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) joins Steve and Kristin and shares crucial information about Operation Napoleon. There are no flashbacks to illustrate Einar’s speech, but there’s some stock footage of the Nazis in a later scene.

The primary audience for “Operation Napoleon” seems to be people who either already know and love Indridason’s novel or can’t resist this sort of hardtack potboiler. Most scenes are paced without much grace or rhythm, many visual compositions appear functional and grey, and the cast often looks like they were given one take and then rushed to the next camera set-up. Dialogue doesn’t build so much as it indicates action that may or may not be on-screen. And in many scenes, Kristin and the gang retrace their steps, presumably to ingratiate themselves to viewers trying to follow their deductive logic and pseudo-historical mythology more than whatever they’re looking at. 

If there must be a sequel, as an anticlimactic finale suggests, perhaps its creators will slow down, maybe take a few extra drafts to polish their jokes, or, better yet, a few extra rehearsals to determine what only reads well on paper. Maybe they could give Julie better material to work with than a yellow pencil and a tedious post-Tarantino speech about dog-like foxes. Or maybe Einar could tell a joke at his expense—he’s such a slob!—that took more time to write than recite. Maybe Kristin and Steve can kiss or look at something interesting while they exposit about Operation Napoleon, like some Icelandic glaciers. Indridason could also come on camera and read directly from his book. Who knows, maybe it’ll make time move faster.

On Demand now.

A full house screamed throughout last night’s Times Square premiere of “Jailer,” a grisly and comedic action Indian thriller starring Rajinikanth, the marquee-topping, Tamil-speaking septuagenarian and self-advertised “Super Star.” Or at least, everybody alive in that auditorium seemed to be cheering for Rajinikanth.

Rajinikanth (“Robot,” “Kaala”) is now 72 years old. His “Jailer” character, a retired cop and prison warden named Muthu “Tiger” Pandian, has a sassy young grandson and a knack for murdering villains. Beheadings and fatal stabbings are a Muthu specialty. He also has a vast network of shady old friends, played by a deep bench of Indian character actors and fellow leading men, who also help Muthu to kill the bad men who threaten his family.

In “Jailer,” the bad men are led by Varman (Vinayakan), a manic crime boss who kidnaps Muthu’s adult son Arjun (Vasanth Ravi), also a cop, and threatens to behead Arjun’s grandson Rithvik (Rithvik Jothi Raj), an aspiring YouTube star, while Rithvik and Muthu get ice cream. Varman’s men taunt Muthu by doing a grotesque dance of joy in the street. He retaliates by hacking at some of them with a gigantic blade: “After a point I don’t talk, I slash.” If you come to “Jailer” for anything but Rajinikinath, you will probably leave disappointed.

“Jailer” simultaneously is and isn’t a typical Rajinikanth vehicle. It’s more self-conscious and more committed than some of his other recent vehicles, as far as reconciling the tonal whiplash banked into the Indian cinema’s kitchen sink, mass-audience-minded masala style. The makers of “Jailer” toggle between emotional registers with confidence and alarming frequency, like whenever Muthu helps Rithvik film a gardening program for his YouTube channel, and then resumes his bloody feud with Varman. In a musical montage that only makes sense after a long-delayed plot twist, Muthu and Rithvik bask in each other’s company while an acoustic guitar plays and a singer paints a sunny picture of a man who, in Rithvik, also sees “my leader … my son.” Meanwhile, Arjun tortures one of Varman’s men, and also orders a fellow cop to not give water to his blood-soaked victim. The acoustic guitarist never takes a break.

The persistent extremity of Varman’s character-defining violence also gives old man Rajinikanth a mandate to be merciless. It’s sometimes even touching to see him match Varman since, as our antihero’s theme song boasts, “He will make your next generation dance to his tunes.” Rajinikanth is perhaps unusual when compared to, say, a Sylvester Stallone or a Steven Seagal, in that he still attracts the sort of young idolatrous filmmakers who all seem obsessed with making the now biologically mature star look eternally iconic. A friend who saw “Jailer” in Los Angeles last night joked about how many times Rajinikanth enters a new room with dramatic flair. In Times Square, each new slow-motion turn to the camera was met with screams. So were Rajinikanth’s lusty action scenes, especially when he finally notices Varman’s barrels of sulphuric acid.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if director Nelson Dilipkumar knows what he’s doing, either with his star or this movie’s volatile mix of tones and styles. “Beast,” Dilipkumar’s loopy third-generation “Die Hard” clone, gives some helpful context since “Beast” pits the relatively young four-quadrant star Vijay against a shopping mall full of terrorists, one of whom he also beheads. In “Jailer,” Muthu is an older man with a legacy to consider. On-screen, Rajinikanth occasionally bumps his head against his emotional range’s low ceiling, like when Muthu cries about Arjun’s fate. In this scene, Rajinikanth leans as hard into his angles as he does whenever Muthu loses it and cackles like a lunatic with a secret.

Before an “INTERMISSION” intertitle flashed across the screen—they never pause for intermission at the AMC Empire 25—Muthu tells us that now that he’s got nothing to lose, he can stop juggling three different faces and just wear one. He says this to his family members after he warns them to stay perfectly still, so that he and his action-pose-ready friends can pick off some more bad men. After the “INTERMISSION” title, there’s an extensive new subplot involving an extra-marital affair, a bad toupee, the comedian Sunil, and the starlet Tamannaah Bhatia. Everybody acts as a version of themselves in “Jailer,” but only Rajinikanth’s performance pulls everything together by sheer willpower.

Rajinikanth is 72 years old, so it’s weirdly moving to see that, every two or three years, he can still crank out a freewheeling star vehicle as vigorous and exhausting as “Jailer.” Just outside theater 25, I overheard a 40-something year old man ask an older companion what he thought about “Jailer.” I couldn’t make out the older fellow’s response, but his chuckle and little shake of the head suggested that he was still enjoying Rajinikanth’s eternal summer.

In theaters now.