From the people who brought you “28 Days Later” comes a bone chilling tale of – munchkin philanthropy in Northern England. Scary!

With “Millions,” the director of “Trainspotting” reaches for bathetic, Spielbergian magic realism and almost grabs on. Melding fable, thriller, cautionary tale, after-school special, Christian allegory, and coming-of-age flick, Danny Boyle’s small-scale dramedy packs oversized ambitions. Give him credit for trying; flawed as it is, “Millions” risks being unfashionable.

Following the recent death of their mother, Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) and Damian (Alex Etel) are about to move into a spanking new housing development in the suburbs of Liverpool. In the frisky credit sequence, they pedal to a construction site, stretch out on their allotment, and call dibs on bedrooms, which materialize around them in clever digital animations. Walls rise up in rapid, “timelapse” manner; shingles fly through the clouds and attach themselves in place; gleaming bathrooms appear out of thin air.

With the imaginative tone quickly and vividly established, “Millions” introduces us to the boy’s father (James Nesbitt as Ronnie), and sketches in their new milieu. Bright, spacious, and tidier than a Hollywood back lot, the neighborhood is both pleasant and dull; the kind of place E.T. might scout for Reese’s Pieces. The local police chief pays a visit and warns about inevitable burglaries in the community – though really, “there’s no community as yet.”

While Anthony sets up his video games, his little brother explores the backyard frontier, building a fort out of cardboard boxes next to the train tracks. Damian’s chief hobby is the study and hallucination of saints, one of whom promptly appears in his fort smoking a doobie. The atmosphere grows tense; something has been flung from a passing train; a soft projectile slams into and levels the fort. Damian pokes his dazed head up from the ruins to find a black Nike duffel bag stuffed to the zipper with cash. A miracle!

“You can see it too, then?” he beams to his wide-eyed brother. Anthony insists they tell no one, not even dad, in order to keep clear of the taxman. His first impulse is to bankroll a sycophantic entourage of schoolmates, an idea that deftly conflates the boy’s social insecurity as new kid on the block with the debased social roles glamorized in pop culture. As for Damian, his first purchase is a flock of pet store birds he takes to a meadow and sets free. “Just like you did!” he chirps to Saint Francis.

But the pressure is on: the clock is ticking toward E-Day, deadline for all British pounds to be converted into euros. Anthony and Damian step up the pursuit of their respective follies: rampant materialism and clueless philanthropy. Whereas Anthony behaves like any other Gen Z consumer, Damian’s altruism is slightly bonkers. He gives several thousand pounds to a trio of neighboring Mormons, buys pizza for a half-dozen street kids, and donates a gigantic roll of bills to a school charity drive for needy children.

This comedy is darkened by the appearance of a glowering, archetypal Bad Guy, come to retrieve the money. That it’s been stolen comes as a shock to Damian, who “thought it was from God.” (“Who else has that kind of money?”) Meanwhile, dad is falling for Dorothy (Daisy Donovan), the administrator of the school charity. Cue Replacement Mom subplot. The pressures of E-Day, Bad Guy, and Replacement Mom come to a head at the school nativity play, but in the end all learn Valuable Life Lessons.

“Money’s just a thing, and things change,” runs a sharp line in the generally sharp screenplay by “24 Hour Party People” scribe Frank Cottrell Boyce. This moral is true, but it isn’t very original. Messrs Boyle and Boyce have got their heart in the right place, but not all of their brains. Damian is wonderfully played but rather abstract as the adorable holy fool. His saintly visions never transcend their earthbound status as writer’s conceit.

“Millions” didn’t quite work for this grown-up; its sentimental agenda ultimately trumps its ethical pretensions, and I wasn’t buying it. But if I had children there’s no movie I’d be more eager to share and discuss with them. It’s startling to see a mainstream movie that deals directly with the problems and possibilities of money.

The film ought to have centered on the spiritual life of Anthony, whose self-gratifying response to money is a more honest, effective, and potentially challenging surrogate for a young audience. But that’s the movie that could have been, and “Millions” is welcome enough for what it is and tries to be.

***

Those fatigued by the hype over “Hotel Rwanda” may choose to steer clear of “In My Country,” another stiff, well-meaning movie about an African crisis. I can’t say I’d blame them. Set during the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the movie stars Samuel L. Jackson (Langston Whitfield) as a Washington Post reporter and a terribly miscast Juliette Binoche (Anna Malan) as a guilty, self-righteous Afrikaans poet who covers the event for radio. There is soul-searching, tear shedding, and a romance.

All of which sounds like a tiresome prospect even without the warning sign of a Message Movie opening in March. I’d have stayed far away myself but for one thing: “In My Country” was directed by the usually good, sometimes great, unequivocally talented John Boorman. The script, alas, was written by Ann Peacock, who has no sense of structure and a lousy ear. It isn’t false to describe the movie as a formless series of unconvincing episodes, but it is unfair. Despite its blatant, groan-inducing flaws and a slightly medicinal aftertaste, “In My Country” is a complex, challenging, almost radical film, and it succeeds exactly where “Hotel Rwanda” fails.

The two movies have a crucial difference. “Rwanda” dramatized genocide in progress; “In My Country” deals with the aftermath and thus benefits from a dramatic position of greater reflection. But the more important distance between the films involves moral perspective.

“Rwanda” treats genocide as a backdrop for heroism. By foregrounding the bravery of a faultless hero, the movie posits no challenge, prompts no lasting reaction, fails to involve. You may be upset by certain (tame) images, or troubled by what (very little) you learn, but ultimately your empathy is asked to do no more than watch a good man deal with bad things. The scale of the Rwandan tragedy was monumental; the meager conventions of “Rwanda” reduce the films to sentimental fascism, with the Don Cheadle character its upright ubermensch.

The moral challenge of “In My Country” is the challenge of the TRC itself. Established in 1996, the commission is based on the principle of Ubuntu, an African conception of justice that seeks reconciliation over revenge, absolution over punishment, forgiveness over blame. Victims of apartheid violence assembled to voice their stories face to face with the perpetrators. The perpetrators, in turn, were offered amnesty if they gave complete verbal confessions, expressed genuine regret, and could prove they acted under orders. TRC held faith that the truth really will set you free.

In the key scene of the movie, we meet a boy struck mute after he witnessed the murder of his parents. He is brought before their killer who, trembling with grief and regret, prostrates himself before the boy in forgiveness. There is a double tension to the scene: How will the boy respond? Can the movie possibly make this maudlin scenario work? The boy reaches out and embraces the man who destroyed his family.

In its very best moments, “In My Country” launches a thrilling, audacious assault on three prized American values: our lust for revenge, our self-serving individualism, and our resistance to naked, oversized sincerity in the movies. When the TRC hearings are resolved, or delayed, or even upsetting to the victims, the assembly breaks into joyous song, dissolving all frustration and anger in a collective, harmonic balm.

This is the opposite of “Hotel Rwanda’s” cliched heroic exceptionalism, and it is infinitely more moving. As a work of cinema, “In My Country” sinks under dubious dialogue and misguided casting. As an expression of what it means to be fellow humans, it asks us to rise above ourselves.

What To See This Week

Rio Bravo (Film Forum) Don’t like westerns? Howard Hawks’s joyous, idiosyncratic masterpiece could be the one to convert you. There’s no more sweetly disarming scene in American cinema than the famous round of “My Rifle, My Pony and Me” sung by cowboys Dean Martin (!) and Ricky Nelson (!!).

The Others (MoMA) Sharp as an icicle and twice as cold, Nicole Kidman rivets in this creepy, elegant ghost story from director Alejandro Amenabar.

8 Women (French Institute Alliance Francaise) Eight of the most iconic French actresses slink into couture, light cigarettes, and catfight in this peacock valentine to glamour from Francois Ozon. Shamelessly trivial and obviously fabulous.