Everly review: Unnecessarily violent, this film is more pulpy than entertaining

It looks like the 2011 Indonesian film The Raid Redemption started off a new genre of movies where a person trapped in a building fights his way through scores of ruffians making their way towards him. Although purely coincidental, Dredd had a similar premise, but Joe Lynch’s Everly seems pretty inspired by this kind of a plot. In this film Salma Hayek stars as the titular character trapped in a hotel room, and waves of people who want to kill her begin making their way towards her room. Everly then cleverly uses makeshift weapons, real ammunition and some hand-to-hand combat to make it out alive. To make things more emotionally manipulative, Everly is a prostitute whose boss Taiko (Hiroyuki Watanabe) condemns her to doom in said hotel room when he finds out that she has been working with the police to rat him out. [caption id=“attachment_2543208” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A still from Everly. Image from Facebook.[/caption] Naturally, the premise doesn’t make much sense, because a mob boss who wants to get rid of his snitch could just as well shoot him or her dead directly. Putting her in a hotel room tied up, with scores of different villains coming to get her is a hilariously contrived way to get rid of her. Of course you’re advised to turn off your brain because this setup gives way to fun fight scenes between Everly and the bad guys. And on that front, the film is fairly entertaining, if you’re a 12-year-old boy, because you get to see Salma Hayek first wearing just underwear, then a nightie and then a tank top and shooting bullets. Strictly taken as a video game, Everly contains a couple of exciting action pieces, one of which is a showdown between Everly and a couple of other hookers shooting automatic guns while she hides behind a kitchen cabinet. As the violence escalates, however, you can’t help but ponder over the intent behind the over the top nature of the violence. Most of the stuff on screen is plan exploitative muck under the guise of entertainment. The Raid didn’t have a few black hookers wearing only bras attacking the central character, it focused only on the fight scenes, but Everly has a brighter focus on the pulpy rubbish. And director Lynch doesn’t have Tarantino’s self-awareness and the grasp on schlock to make his film work despite the wanton misogyny in the material. The exploitative tone of the film is a jarring juxtaposition to the emotional sub plot between Everly and her mother. It’s amusing that the filmmakers want you to care deeply about the poor woman in ridiculously scanty clothes firing machine guns. The villain in the film, who lurks mostly in the shadows throughout the film and is given a predictable reveal, tries his best to be threatening. But there’s an awkward imbalance between nastiness and threat in his character. Whether he’s just a sadistic devil or a manipulative prick in unclear – he exists only for the sake of Hayek shooting pump action shotguns. And if you enjoy that kind of gratuitous stuff, you could probably give this film a shot. The only problem is you’ll be seeing a watered down version of the film the censor board has approved.