Mayhem! has great action but a contradicting plot.
Listen at the podcast providers of your choice.
Action movies are a funny breed. On the one hand they're perhaps the most disrespected genre out there as now even straight-up horror movies are getting Best Picture nominations. On the other hand, everyone seems to love making them and fans of the genre will love you forever if you give them the good stuff. Hence how many action movie fans joked that they'd be boycotting the Oscars because the pure cheese of The Beekeeper didn't garner any nominations. So when I come across an action movie that I feel like I should like, that features a number of solid action scenes, I start to wonder...why. Why isn't this hitting the way I feel like it should? That's the exact feeling I had watching today's brutal action movie, appropriately titled, Mayhem!.
The Setup
The movie centers around Sam, a former prisoner whose life is turned upside down when characters from his past arrive and Sam kills one of the men in self-defense. Now looking to make his way with his wife and daughter in Thailand, Sam is forced back into a life of crime to achieve his dreams, but ends up in a nightmare instead.
At a surface glance, I should really like Mayhem! As simple as they tend to be, action-revenge movies like this have a gut-level appeal. And when you pair them with this film's brutal approach to action, it certainly stands out. So what's the issue? Well first, I'm going to get into what this movie does well before I levy my big critiques.
Pro: A Brutal Approach to Action
The action in Mayhem! is the obvious highlight and definitely lives up to the title by both being incredibly gory and bloody and features a lot of camera movement the highlight moves and countermoves or to indicate the changing tide in a standard exchange.
Considering the location you might think we're going to have a bunch of a crunchy knees and elbows hitting faces. And while that does happen, the bigger emphasis in all of these bouts is close-quarters punishment. Now something you may or may not have realized about a lot of a modern martial arts and action movies put their action in restrictive spaces.
The why varies, but generally speaking, it's an easier way to justify the one vs. many fights the genre likes so much. It means the "one attacker at a time" rule has a built in justification and that our hero is still in a lot of danger if they don't take out the first attacker quickly.
Mayhem! holds pretty steady to this rule and since our hero is a good fighter but not a bulldozer, we still have plenty of room for him to take a lot of hits on his way through each of these corridors.
Director Xavier Gens and company also have knack for moving the camera at the appropriate time. For instance when Sam and a goon are deadlocked, we cut to Sam tripping up both of their feet and now we're on the ground with them. Stuff like that.
Con: A Really Really Slow Start
One of my least favorite tropes are action movies that only become action movies in the film's final 40 minutes. I can forgive an intro portion to establish characters, relationships and conflict, but this movie feels like it starts, then restarts, and finally picks up steam...only to stop again so our hero, who was already on a vengeance track, is on an even darker/more intense one.
As an example, the first John Wick opens with his wife's funeral. Things are bad. We bring in the puppy. Things are better. Tragedy strikes because of that shithead from Game of Thrones. We learn they fucked with the wrong guy, and that's about 25-30 minutes and we're off to the races.
I'm not always one for exposition dumps, but this movie is begging for one and only decides to do one...at the very end. Very very frustrating.
Con: What's The Movie About?
Something that's so strange to me about this movie is that the action and acting in this movie seem to be telling a different story than the plot. The plot of this movie is about how a man is seemingly unable to escape his violent past or the criminal life. He gets out of jail and tries to go straight and then a gangster accosts him at his job and he kills a man. So he goes on the run to Thailand and starts a new life.
But to get the things he wants in Thailand he has to cozy up to a French national and gangster who puts him in harm's way and kicks off the entire revenge plot. So now to save his daughter, he's going to have to do a whole bunch of gangster shit, including murdering dudes.
But to get the things he wants in Thailand he has to cozy up to a French national and gangster who puts him in harm's way and kicks off the entire revenge plot. So now to save his daughter, he's going to have to do a whole bunch of gangster shit, including murdering dudes.
That's the plot.
The story being told visually is that Sam is losing every shred of his humanity and becoming a monster.
It's actually a lot like a recent favorite of mine Kill out of India. In that movie the hero is heroic until his reason for heroism is taken from him. And then he becomes a mindless monstrous killing machine. Violence begets violence and eventually it's two monsters who have both taken out each other's loved ones for no other reason but spite, fighting to the death.
Sam seems to be avoiding violence because he knows what it will turn him into. So much so that he's willing to throw a muy thai match way too early because he knows unlocking that killer instinct is a dangerous proposition.
Sam's mentor treats this turn towards a warrior 's path like a point of no return where neither one of them is likely to make it out alive or whole.
Anyone who catches Sam in the aftermath of one of his intense bouts is overwhelmed by the blood and hyperventilating he's doing. He looks monstrous and everyone caught in his wake is probably going to be dead or scared for life.
And it's right when this theme starts getting established that the movie calls back Sam's criminal past and...man that's jarring.
This is the main issue people have with the worst M. Night Shyamalan twists. It's not that the twist isn't a novel idea by itself. It's that the twist often contradicts everything else the movie was building up or building towards. And that's how Mayhem! felt for me. It's action is suitably gritty and great. But it's telling a completely different story than the actual plot.
This is the main issue people have with the worst M. Night Shyamalan twists. It's not that the twist isn't a novel idea by itself. It's that the twist often contradicts everything else the movie was building up or building towards. And that's how Mayhem! felt for me. It's action is suitably gritty and great. But it's telling a completely different story than the actual plot.
No comments:
Post a Comment