‘Dutch’ Review: It’s Amateur Night at the Movies in This Franchise Non-Starter

“Dutch” is dreadful.

It’s a shambling, rambling recycling of clichés and conventions from ’70s Blaxploitation fare mixed with stilted murder-trial melodrama and half-baked morsels of sociopolitical topicality.

But, really, to describe this rancid slice of ineptitude that way is to risk making it sound a lot more interesting than it is.

Written and directed by Preston A.

Whitmore II (“This Christmas”), who obviously went about both tasks with all the zeal of someone paying off a debt, the movie progresses in bumpy fits and starts, with a time-tripping, flashback-within-flashback structure that does little to energize, and much to confuse, its simplistic plot.The protagonist is introduced as Bernard James (JJ Batteast), a Black youngster who proves his loyalty to his white Italian boss at a pizzeria by fatally shooting a would-be robber.

This greatly impresses a mob boss uncreatively christened Fat Tony (Robert Costanzo), who just happened to be

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