Everly
Studio: Radius-TWC
Directed by Joe Lynch
Feb 26, 2015
Web Exclusive
After spending four years as a sex slave to a ruthless Yakuza boss, Everly has reached the end of the line. She’s killed the guards in his penthouse and is all set to escape with enough stolen mob money to start a new life for her long suffering mother and her young daughter. All she has to do is walk out of the building. Unfortunately for her, an army of mercenaries, crooked cops, prostitutes and Yakuza have arrived with their sights set on Everly and the enormous bounty on her head. Unfortunately for them, Everly is completely dug in, heavily armed, and extremely pissed off.
Everly has its faults, but lack of ambition is certainly not one of them. Director Joe Lynch has taken the now-classic Die Hard formula of a hero trapped in a confined location with a bunch of bad guys and married it to the hyper-violent lunacy of Robert Rodriguez and the over-the-top gore of Japanese crime films, while simultaneously maintaining a focus on the horrors of sex slavery and abuse that verges on torture porn. There’s a lot going on and not all of it works, but it sure is fun to sit through. Lynch makes creative use of his limited set–95% of the film takes place in the penthouse or the hallway just outside–and the continual carnage alters the landscape and features of the set, keeping things fresh throughout. The pacing falters at points, giving the film a disjointed, episodic feel that works as long as you’re digging whatever tone the movie has settled into. The only major misstep is the aforementioned torture porn segment, when Everly must contend with a sadistic torture expert and his creepy masked minions in a sequence that becomes a bit more fetishistic than one might want in a movie about an empowered former sex slave.
As Everly herself, Salma Hayek remains as captivating as ever, gracefully pivoting from desperate, trapped mouse to machine-gun-wielding angel of death, often in the same scene. Much has been made lately–and rightly so–of Hollywood dragging its feet when it comes to racial and gender equality, making a creative action film staring a woman of color in her forties a welcome sight.
radiustwc.com/releases/everly/
Author rating: 6/10
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