EVERLY

CONTAINS KABOOM SPOILERS

More violence, and enough of it to get an 18 (and not hacked back to get a teen-friendly 15 either). Joe Lynch's shoot-em-up killfest certainly doesn't skimp on the corn syrup and on that level it's more than entertaining enough, and it's a pity that it had the most minuscule "limited release" in UK cinemas (probably a couple of late screenings at one suburban London multiplex at most: enough to qualify for theatrical reviews but scarcely an actual cinema release that more than a handful of people could attend). How are we supposed to enjoy films in their natural habitat if you don't actually show them to us?

Everly takes place in one apartment - the camera doesn't move from its confines until the last shot of the film - in which brutalised sex slave Everly (Salma Hayek) decides she's finally had enough of the odious gangsters who've imprisoned and abused her over the years. She has the guns, she has the cash: all she has to do is get out of the apartment alive and reunite with her mother and her daughter. But the gang boss isn't prepared to lose her that easily, putting a contract on her head and sending dozens of top-level assassins after her....

Sophisticated it ain't (the film may technically pass the Bechdel Test, but it's a blokes' movie through and through). But it is rather good fun, stylishly put together and very noisy with a welcome streak of weird comedy. One particular killer, known as The Sadist (who comes with his own personal masked retinue of assistants), seeks to transform Everly's execution into some kind of ritual performance art, which is agreeably cruel though it either slows the film's pace right down (or provides a respite from the constant gunfire, depending on your point of view). I enjoyed it.

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