EVERLY (2014)

Everly (2014)
Directed by: Joe Lynch
Written by: Joe Lynch, Yale Hannon
Starring: Akie Kotabe, Hiroyuki Watanabe, Laura Cepeda, Salma Hayek, Togo Igawa

EVERLY (2014)
Directed by Joe Lynch

After betraying crime lord Taiko and getting involved with the police to take him down, Everly finds herself the target of the ruthless crime boss as he sends his henchmen to torture and kill her. However, Everly won’t take the punishment quietly and fights to protect not only herself but her mother Edith and her four year old daughter Maisey who Taiko threatens to harm. Realising she won’t be an easy kill, Taiko places a bounty on Everly’s head for his other armed prostitutes in the building to claim as well as dispatching his own blood-thirsty crews out to kill her once and for all.

Over-the-top action thriller-cum-comedy EVERLY stars the beautiful Salma Hayek as the determined Everly who turns badass after being gang-raped in the apartment which she has been trapped in for the last few years. Realising she’s about to meet her maker, she has a choice: to turn the gun on herself or on the violent pigs in the next room. The next hour and a half sees Everly battle her way to survival against an onslaught of armed assassins. It seems everyone’s against her but she finds help in the form of a young Asian henchman who, like the rest of the men in her room, was ordered by Taiko to kill her. Despite his involvement, he admits that the only reason he’s committed such heinous crimes was due to fear of what Taiko would do to him if he refused. It would seem not everyone wants to work for Taiko or enjoys the jobs he instructs them to do. Slowly bleeding to death after an initial firefight, which saw Everly take on her assailants in the room, he decides to attempt to do good before succumbing to his injuries, a blissful exit from the world than what would happen if Taiko got his hands on him.

Realism is left at the door in this movie. Though it may have a heartfelt storyline with an enslaved Everly trying to protect her mother and child, it’s merely an excuse for a comic-book style serving of revenge and survival… albeit with a small arsenal. I mean, where else would you see a woman storing a grenade in her cleavage whilst wielding a pump action shotgun? The action scenes and deaths are where EVERLY excels at. They may be quite corny and exaggerated by normal thriller standards but the execution is certainily entertaining fare with its shotgun deaths, female-on-female brawls and grenade explosions. There’s even an enraged semi-naked masochist and a sadist armed with an array of acids to take on Everly, so she’s not got an easy ride even if she somehow manages to overcome armed, more-skilled (you would have imagined) opponents without too much difficulty.

With plenty of blood-splatter to please horror hounds, EVERLY isn’t all bad and even provides some laughs here and there, but ultimately it fails in its goal of being an enjoyable thriller. The action scenes are often caricaturish and after a while it all becomes more of the same – bad guy tries to get into Everly’s apartment, they fight, bad guy dies. Even the mother-daughter angle is weak and fails to have the impact it desires.

Take your brain out of the equation and EVERLY is a lot of fun but after a while, it’s rather monotonous.

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