Everly (2014)

Dir: Joe Lynch

Everly (Salma Hayek) is at a turning point. She has been gang raped by the thugs of Yakuza boss Taiko (Hiroyuki Watanabe) in retaliation for changing from kept woman to police informant. Taking a moment in the bathroom of the apartment owned by Taiko and the scene of her punishment she tries desperately to contact the police detective who flipped her. Unable to get a hold of him and with the scum banging at the door she contemplates putting the stashed pistol in her hand to her head and pulling the trigger.

The banging at the door increases in intensity. A man's voice gets angrier.

Everly decides to fight back.

That's the plot of this film directed by Joe Lynch (CHILLERAMA). Everly in the apartment as wave after wave of professional and would be assassins try to take her out and appease her infuriated former lover Taiko. After dispensing with the rapists, word quickly gets out to her prostitute neighbours that there's a bounty on her head and they come out of the wood work to take her down and collect the reward. Then mercenaries, the police and odd ball characters all converge on the apartment. I lost track of the variety of weapons used; shotgun, sai, revolver, SMG, machine gun, RPG, meat cleaver, the list goes on and on.

Everly isn't a trained killer though. She's no LEON with decades of practice under her belt. Instead she survives the attack by luck and determination. The viewer has to crank up their disbelief level as it takes a lot of acceptance that Everly survives even the first encounter.

Yale Hannon's screenplay, Joe Lynch's direction and Salma Hayek's likability keep interest up while one implausible encounter after another occurs as if we were watching a Wile E. Coyote cartoon or playing a video game. The amount of blood and gore splashed around blew me away. I wasn't expecting more red stuff on display here than in most of the horror films I've seen. I'd peg this at an eight on the Chas Balun Gore Score.

I was able to suspend disbelief up to a point but one weird situation after another, all taking place in one apartment, became a bit too much. And the shifts from and to light comedy, action, and splatter were sometimes clunky and out of place.

** 1/2 out of ****