Walls Have Ears

Unfortunately, “Walls Have Ears’’ looks under-budgeted and under-developed. Dramatic pauses turn into awkward silences. Dialogue is sometimes painfully clunky. (“What were you doing in there?’’ “I was just passing by when I saw some pictures from a distance and went to check them out.’’)

Mansur plays lottery winner Papa Sam. He has put $1 million in the bank and the other $1 million in a safe in his bedroom - hmmm, that can’t end well. Kathryn Woods plays his sensible wife, Madame Sam, who wishes he’d be smarter with his money.

Papa Sam’s son Johnny, played by Scott Neufville, talks him out of a wad of bills to use in a drug deal. Meanwhile Madame Sam’s prodigal niece Toutou, played by Dahiana Torres, returns to the family, taking a train from New York to South Station to escape beatings from her husband.

Right behind, of course, is that hubby, Don Pepe, played by Romond Pamphile. His look is classic Blaxploitation pimp circa 1973: flashy hats, boas and scarves and dashikis, plus a boot gun and big knife. But he’s so broke he does a dine-and-dash at a restaurant. He’s not the most imposing villain.

Johnny and Toutou used to be lovers, of course, and the plot centers around the rekindling of their flame and the theft of the bedroom million. There are a couple of pretty good twists at the end.

But the movie’s problems come to a head in the big chase scene, which is a mess. It ends when a car goes off a road in the middle of what we clearly see is a flat marsh - near Plum Island, it looks like - and somehow plunges into a deep stone canyon, where there’s a burst of superimposed flames.

It’s an unhappy thing to clobber a homegrown production. But the problems here easily outweigh the pluses.