After her recent high-profile campaign for New York governor — not to mention untold episodes of “Sex and the City” — Cynthia Nixon struggles to convince as an Eastern European motelier and possible human trafficker. Playing the shady Una in “Stray Dolls,” a small-scale crime thriller, she delivers both performance and accent without fault. Even so, her casting is a problematic distraction, both from the movie’s far less recognizable stars and from a story that’s flimsy to begin with.

“I got a big heart,” Una tells her latest acquisition, Riz (Geetanjali Thapa), an undocumented Indian immigrant who has arrived in upstate New York hoping for a better life. Promised a room and a cleaning job, Riz crashes into reality immediately when she meets her roommate, Dallas (Olivia DeJonge), a grasping runaway who steals Riz’s meager belongings at knife-point. They will be returned when Riz has carried out Dallas’s instructions to steal from the motel’s guests, a crime that Riz is adamantly unwilling to commit. Given that we have already seen Una surreptitiously shred Riz’s passport, it’s clear that the newcomer’s reluctance will be short-lived.