New film review time, Everly is a fast paces action flick that takes place inside an apartment starring Salma Hayek. A Bloody action packed film with a strong central female character and some nefarious Yakuza type bad guys. Check out my review after the jump...
Everly is the kind
of film you'd expect to see while going through the list of films on
Netflix, that hidden gem you new nothing about but clicked to see if
it was any good and 90 minutes later you're completely happy that you
clicked it because EVERLY is an insanely fun, adults only action
flick that zips by and leaves you wanting more.
The film is directed
by Joe Lynch, primarily known for horror, even though he's only
directed 1 horror film and the LARPING comedy, Knights Of Badassdom,
a film unfairly taken away from him and re-edited, Lynch is still
known as a horror guy, but if ever a film was to cement a director
for future feature films, Everly would be that film. It seems that
Lynch has put everything into Everly, his blood, sweat and tears and
it shows. The film is a heightened reality movie, a comic book
exploitation movie along the lines of Michael Davis' Shoot 'Em Up
(2007) and Kern Saxton's Sushi Girl (2012) that owes a debt to the
films of Quentin Tarantino, maybe not directly but there is a
definite sense of influence in these films. It also takes in cues
from Japanese Yakuza films, Gangster movies, Die Hard etc.
The plot of Everly
is incredibly simple. Everly is a whore, not by choice but by force,
taken from her life and her family 4 years prior, Everly was once the
girlfriend of sadistic Yakuza crime boss, Taiko, a ruthless criminal
with everything in his pockets including the cops. After being
brutalized by a group of Yakuza one night, Everly decides enough is
enough and in a fit of rage kills the group of Yakuza. She receives a
phone call from Taiko who proclaims that she will not live to see
morning, she will die in the apartment that night. For the next 90
minutes, Everly will have to take on hitmen, corrupt coppers, a
Yakuza torturer and hookers trying to kill her for $50,000.
Lynch described
EVERLY as “die hard in an apartment” and he's not wrong their as
Everly despatched anyone and anything (including a dog) that tries to
kill her, much like John McClane does in Die Hard.
Salma Hayek give a
strong performance and the title character, Everly. The film relies
on an actress to carry the entire plot and she's rarely off screen,
she needs to be tough but sexy and Hayek has that in spades, a
stunning beauty but with a badass attitude, and for a woman at the
age of 48, Hayek still looks like an woman in her early 30s. She does
a great job and really does carry the film perfectly.
The Action works
perfectly in the close surroundings of the apartment and the adjacent
corridor which to takes a battering. Lynch handles the action well
considering the premise takes place in a single location, the gun
fights are fun and well choreographed and some of them come across as
darkly comic. There's also a healthy amount of the red stuff on
display in Everly, a lot of blood is spilled so to say including a
scene with an elevator but i'll leave that up to your imagination.
Like I previously
stated, Everly is a film not intended to be taken seriously, it's a
brutal, darkly comic action romp with it's tongue firmly in it's
cheek and Lynch and writer, Yale Hannon know this, it's the bloody
idiots who expect realism in an action movie who don't actually get
the film.
I think Everly is
destined to become a cult fave, that's a pretty cool tag to have when
you think of the amount of films out there that have gained that
status over the years including flicks like Mad Max 2 and The Crow,
so Everly will be in good company. If this is what we can expect from
Joe Lynch when not handcuffed to producers wrists and with full
creative control, I can just about see Lynch making it in the big
leagues, it's happened before, James Gunn started off with Troma and
last year made the best Marvel movie to date with Guardians OF The
Galaxy.
Everly is a great
action flick with some minor tickles but don't let that stop your
enjoyment. I loved it and I hope others love it too...
Everly (2015) Dir: Joe Lynch
Starring: Salma Hayek, Jennifer Blanc,
Togo Igawa, Hiroyuki Watanabe
Cert: 18-UK/R-US for Strong Bloody
Violence, Torture, Nudity, Sexual Images and Language
Runtime: 92 Mins.
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