If you're at all interested in what a reliably compelling, stubbornly solemn commercial filmmaker can do with money, imagination and no little nerve, "Dune" is epic enough — even if there's a wee hole in the middle, where a more compelling protagonist belongs. Sharon Duncan-Brewster in a scene from "Dune." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP/AP) Timothée Chalamet is the wee hole. This is somewhat surprising, since the young actor has done so well in both period and contemporary material in recent years. Maybe it's my fatigue with Chosen One fantasies. Partly it's director Villeneuve's pictorial framing of Chalamet in repose, in various moods: preoccupied Brontë hero, cliffside; psychic communicator in smoldering yet boyish close-up, about to use "The Voice" on an adversary; and so on. He's not a big drag on the movie overall, but Chalamet's work tends toward single notes of opaque introspection rather than chords of fuller emotion. The year is 10191. Atreides (Chalamet) has been bred to become a savior, though he doesn't realize it yet, known as the kwisatz haderach. On home planet Caladan, his folks Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) get their marching orders from Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV to take over the spice-mining operations on Arrakis, aka Dune, and indeed the entire planet with all its conquered citizens, known as Fremen. Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard, looking like a flying Little Face from "Dick Tracy"), former ruler of Arrakis: not happy. Always greedy. Terrible steward of Arrakin's precious resource, which is the key (I still don't get this part, in any version) to interplanetary travel and superpowers too trippy for a Marvel movie. Paul is a young knight, cast in the mold of King Arthur and his gang in days of old. The new "Dune" movie plays out like his quest (mostly on Arrakis) to become the much-prophesied "Muad'Dib," who will lead the Fremen to freedom and himself to the arms of the young woman he's dreamed about for years. The actor Zendaya plays Chani, not particularly prominent or verbal in this first installment. (If they get the green light for part two, she'll talk more.) To what degree does Villeneuve's "Dune" resemble a golf tee for that hoped-for second half? A little. It's not making its first-halfness a secret. "Part One" hits the screen, right after the title, early on. "This is the only the beginning," we're reminded two and a half hours later.