If 'The African Queen' were remade today

About three minutes.

That’s how much time elapses in “The African Queen” from the moment the Germans tighten nooses around Charlie and Rosie’s necks until the gunboat explodes.

Before you can say “Hollywood classic,” Bogie and Hepburn are swimming toward shore, none the worse for having endured a swarm of mosquitos, a broken propeller and — in the case of Bogart’s character — serious withdrawal after the teetotaling Hepburn pours all his gin into the river.

When thinking about how slowly “The African Queen” unfurls, how much care director John Huston takes to define both lead characters and their upstairs/downstairs-type romance, and how this languid pace is contrasted by a brisk and efficient finale, it’s hard not to compare the film to Hollywood blockbusters of today, where characterization takes a backseat to endless explosions and one-liners, and where the pace is always faster than Ricochet Rabbit ping-ping-pinging off walls in those old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

If “The African Queen” were made today — say, by director Michael Bay — instead of 1951, it would be a much different film.

For one, Rose would show more skin. Her schoolmarmish outfit, despite being appropriate for a missionary woman in 1914, would somehow find a way to be torn open at the midriff, and ample cleavage would be revealed as she helped navigate down the river.

Charlie would have a dark and haunted past, one that tied in with the Germans skulking about in their gunboat. Maybe he would be a German expat instead of Canadian, and the commander of the gunboat would be his brother, just waiting for this opportunity to finish off his woebegone sibling.

Rosie’s plight would also be accentuated. Charlie’s evil brother, attracted to her bare midriff and heaving bosom, would attempt to persuade her to leave the bumbling Charlie. In a scene of candlelit faux romance, the bound-and-tied Rose would spit on the brother, much to the delight of the audience.

Either Rosie or Charlie — or maybe both — would be schooled in ninja-style fighting tactics, somersaulting over the gunwale, dodging bullets, shrugging off copious amounts of head trauma, and going all John Rambo on the Germans, who would be unable to subdue their foe despite outnumbering him or her sixty to one.

And that three-minute climax? Fahgettaboudit. Now it’s thirty minutes, filled with hair-raising escapes, hand-to-hand combat and explosions. Plenty of explosions. Because a modern movie without explosions is like a White House press conference without Sean Spicer — no fun.

And while the 1951 “African Queen” can get by with just one jury-rigged torpedo, made from material that Charlie has (somewhat plausibly) onboard ship, that’s not a big enough boom for modern audiences.

No, in 2017, Charlie would be an arms smuggler with a heart of gold, and he would have a boat full of bombs, guns and grenades, all of which could be pressed into service to make his humble craft a floating engine of death.

But wait, there’s more. That German gunboat would be carrying a nuclear bomb. Nevermind that it’s 1914, it would have one just the same. Or the time period would jump to the modern day, because nobody likes period pieces anyway. And that bomb, when it explodes, could start a chain reaction that would destroy all of East Africa, and possibly the entire world.

Because stakes have to be global and involve billions of people for a modern movie to mean anything, don’tcha know?

And, yes, Charlie’s torpedo-lined boat hitting the German gunboat would appear to be the catalyst for apocalypse, making Charlie at least as big a menace as the one he’s trying to stop, but luckily Charlie or Rosie is a nuclear scientist and, if he or she has just a few minutes alone in the bowels of the gunboat, can defuse the bomb, so that the impending explosion kills only the evil Germans and none of the good guys, except maybe for a sidekick who has to succumb to prove that the stakes were really high.

And if the audience buys a lot of tickets, you’d better believe that Rosie and Charlie will be back in a few summers with “The African Queen: Dark Corridor of Dripping Death” or somesuch.

Well, it makes no sense and it makes good sense, because that’s how movies are made today. Strap yourselves in, pass the earplugs and check your IQ at the door.

Originally published in June 2017.