KEKEXILI: MOUNTAIN PATROL
unrated, 95 minutes

The windswept Kekexili highlands on the Tibet-China border are home to the endangered Tibetan antelope. If that factoid suggests the dullest of conservation documentaries, then you haven’t met the ass-kicking poacher police of the harrowing Chinese adventure “Kekexili Mountain Patrol.”

Make that the sometimes ass-kicking Patrol leader Ritai (Duobuji) and his team spend much of their time trying not to freeze, starve, drown in quicksand, or collapse from the thin air. Against a backdrop of unyielding mountains, they rumble in Range Rovers across endless plains in oft-fruitless pursuit of their unscrupulous quarry.

Our introduction to these insanely persistent do-gooders is through a sympathetic Chinese journalist, Ga Yu Zhang Lei), chasing a story. A hangeron, he seems to be there to remind us of the extraordinary factual basis of the story: an actual volunteer poacher patrol begun in the early ’90s. The back story only makes the single-minded Ritai all the more a source of awe and mystery: What drives this tough-talker who has the no-nonsense manner of a precinct sergeant?

“Kekexili” doesn’t have to be big on character development because action in extremis produces its own visceral truths and welter of emotions. Director Chuan Lu also doesn’t flinch from showing nonenvironmental violence against man or animal, whether a murder of expediency or the skinning of a rabbit.

Grown men would (and do) cry at the prospect of perishing in such conditions The terror of dying alone on the Kekexili is palpable and contagious. “It’s more interesting” than being a student, one of Ritai’s young colleagues says. That’s one way of putting it.

“Kekexili” is too honest about its bleakness to satisfy as an action movie might. Mr. Lu’s is a different project, and he knows how to end it. So be sure to catch this before Paul Walker shows up in the inevitable Hollywood version.

– Nicolas Rapold

SISTERS IN LAW
unrated, 104 minutes

“You cannot defend what you have done,” the judge barks in “Sisters in Law.” “You have no excuse.” The sentence? Jail time.

It sounds like an episode of “Judge Judy,” but this is in a documentary about the Cameroonian court system. What’s even more surprising is that everyone involved – including the judge and prosecutor – is a woman. Welcome to the world of “Sisters in Law,” a sharply observed documentary about the women who run the legal system in this small African country.

In a week when the biggest movie being released is “Scary Movie 4,” you owe it to yourself to get your mind out of the gutter and be truly entertained by this flick.

– Grady Hendrix

BLACKBALLED: THE BOBBY DUKES STORY
unrated, 91 minutes

Oh, Spinal Tap, what hast thou wrought? Since you blew onto the scene with your Stonehenge and your amplifiers that go to “11,” there have been a million low-budget imitations. While there have been mockumentary hits like “The Blair Witch Project” and “The Office,” the cinema-scape is littered with the corpses of failures. And now I direct your attention to the latest corpse: “Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story.”

“Blackballed” is a moderately amusing, toothless mockumentary about Bobby Dukes, who was the greatest player in paintball history until he was forced out of the sport for cheating. This shot-on-video flick picks up 10 years later as Dukes – older, wiser, and balder – tries to make a comeback. Because of his past disgrace, no legit players will join his new paintball team. And so, in one of the hoariest of sports movies cliches, Dukes has to assemble a legion of lovable losers to win the big trophy. Rob Corddry (“The Daily Show”) plays Dukes with an agreeable decency, and Rob Huebel throws himself into his role as the boneheaded Sam Brown with a dedication worthy of Steven Seagal. The rest of the Upright Citizens Brigade cast, however, wears its smirking superiority on its sleeves.

There isn’t a single original joke or plot point in “Blackballed,” but the real problem is that the film mocks the foibles of normal, everyday losers. As the old adage goes: Tragedy is easy, comedy is hard. The director and writers of “Blackballed” just don’t have the chops.

– G.H.

NATHALIE …
unrated, 105 minutes

Despite an easily discovered twist late in the film, Anne Fountaine’s “Nathalie …” is both provocative and intriguing. Focusing on marriage and fidelity, the French-language film was filmed two years ago and is now getting an American release.

“Nathalie …” begins with Catherine (Fanny Ardant), who believes she is happily married to her oft-absent husband Bernard (Gerard Depardieu), listening to a voice-mail message left for him, which ends with a faceless woman passively announcing, “We had good sex. Take care.”

Catherine confronts Bernard about his infidelity, to which he confesses. When she asks him how often he cheats, he responds, “Not often, but occasionally.” Dejected, confused, and unsure how to respond, Catherine hires a prostitute named Marlene (Emmanuelle Beart) to assume the false identity of Nathalie, seduce Bernard, and report back to her.

This begins a series of erotic, sex-centered conversations, where Marlene recounts in painstaking detail what she and Bernard have done together. Catherine keeps her knowledge of these trysts from Bernard and soon finds herself sexually liberated, as well as attracted to Marlene.

The film that Ms. Fountaine (“How I Killed My Father”) has created remains in toxicating and convincing throughout, helped no doubt by its trio of top-notch performances.

– Edward Goldberger

THE WILD
G, 80 minutes

“The Wild” marks Disney’s return to worshipping the king of the jungle. But “The Lion King” was released 12 years ago, and it appears the creative well has run dry. Brought down by a severe lack of imagination and a terminal surplus of James Belushi, the attractive CG animation in “The Wild” is overwhelmed by a stale, wonderless screenplay that could have been credited to Committee.

Kiefer Sutherland’s voice gives life to Samson, a beloved and revered lion who makes his residence at the New York Zoo. His son Ryan (Greg Cipes), ashamed of his own kitty-like roar, is not as content. In a moment of rebellion, he sneaks onto a crate without realizing that it is about to be shipped to an African jungle.

“Nooo!” Samson screams, like he’s headlining a Jack Bauer convention. When he finds his son has gone missing, it isn’t long before he enlists his animal friends to help him track Ryan down. The animal comrades include Benny (Mr. Belushi), a wise-cracking squirrel; Bridget (Janeane Garofalo), a feminine giraffe; Nigel (Eddie Izzard), a heavily accented koala; and Larry (Richard Kind), an idiot snake. Sneaking away in a garbage truck, the rogue creatures travel through Times Square (a sequence of product placement that probably paid for the film), the sewers, and finally New York Harbor. There, they avoid capture (just as well, considering what befell poor Hal the Coyote last week) and board a ship heading toward (sigh) the wild.

Up to this point, Steve “Spaz” Williams’s film isn’t especially funny or entertaining, and things do not change much once the animals reach their destination. The faults vary from nitpicking inaccuracies (Giraffes have black tongues, not pink), to miscast actors. In particular, Mr. Sutherland, whose line readings are distractingly hollow, isn’t helped by particularly shallow dialogue. He spends most of the film screaming his son’s name. At one point he exclaims “Ryan!” six consecutive times, like a catch phrase gone wrong. He shouts it so often children in the audience began to mock-scream it back.

With the advance of the Dreamworks and Fox animation divisions, one would think competition would keep the animators at Disney on top of their game, but today (when they aren’t collaborating with Pixar) their films seem to have lost the flavor they possessed 15 years ago. So much for “Hakuna Matata.”

– E.G.