Mr. Car and the Knights Templar, directed by Antoni Nykowski, reached Netflix in July 2023 with a premise built for easy viewing. A well-known art historian, treasure hunter and owner of an unusual car stumbles on a Templar treasure, and it proves to be the key to a power that could upset the balance of good and evil in the world. Simple enough to follow. The trouble starts afterwards. When the hour and fifty minutes were over, I could not have said whether I had watched a thriller, a light comedy or a solemn lesson in heritage. The film drifts between the three without committing to any of them, and it is still undecided when the credits roll.

Adventure, drama and family entertainment are all on offer at once, and the film never works out how they should share a room. Tomasz, played by Mateusz Janicki and nicknamed Samochodzik, goes up against a hostile organization with the help of friendly scouts, and what is at stake is the heritage of the knightly orders. That is a big subject for a picture meant partly for children, and the film names it often but builds almost no scene around it. The race against time is announced rather than felt. Each scene runs at the pace of the one before it, so nothing ever seems to hurry. One critic, writing around the time of release, said the story trundles along with little momentum and even less suspense. I would put it less sourly, but I recognise the impatience.

Sandra Drzymalska plays Anka Modzelewska and Maria Dębska plays Karen. Around them are Jacek Beler as ‘Adios’, Anna Dymna as ‘Łajma’, Olgierd Blecharz as ‘Sokole Oko’, Kalina Kowalczuk as ‘Wiewióra’ and Piotr Sega as ‘Mentorek’. The nicknames are the most charming thing on offer, because they suggest a team with a private language of its own. The scenes never follow through on that. A band of friends convinces us only once we have spent time with each member, and here the characters arrive as a group and remain one. I struggled to say what set one apart from another. Anna Dymna, for one, is left with little more than a nickname to answer to, and it is hard to see why such a name in the cast list was given so little to do.

The film’s real difficulty sits in the middle of the frame. A treasure hunter who works alongside young helpers has to be someone they would follow anywhere: quick with a joke, visibly hungry for the chase, a little vain about his own cleverness. Janicki’s Tomasz comes across instead as a cautious observer who happens to stand wherever the plot needs him. In a scholar, reserve is a defensible choice. In the man who is supposed to hold a team together, it cools exactly the bond that should make the young characters, and the young viewers, care about him. The unusual car and the famous nickname are meant to do the work of characterisation, and they do not. The car tells us what he drives and the name tells us what others call him. Neither gives a reason why this man, rather than anyone else, would risk his skin for a Templar relic. One review aimed at parents called him short on charm and the plot confusing. The first charge seems fair to me. The second grows fairer as the characters multiply.

The pacing compounds the problem. The race against time lives in the synopsis, but on screen the story rarely feels as though it is running. Scenes move at one even speed, and the moments that ought to tighten pass without a flicker of suspense. The Templar treasure behaves less like something people would fight over than like an item on a checklist. Przemysław Bluszcz as Petersen and Ewa Błaszczyk as Gierymska are in the cast, yet the hostile organization never acquires a face. We are told it is dangerous and are never given a reason to feel it. An adventure lives on the sense that someone is close behind the hero, and this one seldom makes us look over our shoulder. Films of this kind for younger audiences work best when the villain does not need to be frightening, only present, and when one clear obstacle in each scene counts for more than a general atmosphere of peril.

The moral idea is the most ambitious thing in the film. A power that can tip the balance between good and evil is exactly the kind of thing that could make a young audience ask whom it is safe to trust, and what one would do with such a power oneself. The film touches on the question and moves on. It never stays with a single difficult decision, and no choice costs anyone anything. The struggle between good and evil is named in the synopsis, and that is about as far as it goes, because no character has to live through it. For a film that also files itself under drama, that is a serious omission. Here nobody pays for anything, and so nothing that happens leaves a mark on the people it happens to.

I do not want to be unkind to the intention. The notion of young scouts helping a treasure hunter protect an old inheritance suits the family spirit the film is after, and children who want an adventure with a mystery at its heart will find undemanding company in it. The film also deserves credit for building a story on knightly orders and old crosses, subjects a more cynical production might have dropped for something louder. But grown-up viewers will see where it comes apart: a plot that asks for more attention than it repays, and a lead whose colleagues have little visible reason to stand by him.

In the end the film gathers many nicknamed characters and not one who pulls the others along. A Templar secret, a rival organization and a car that sets its owner apart are all present, but none is given a scene that makes it matter. Nobody on screen seems eager to solve anything, and after a while the audience stops being eager too.