La Venganza Del Dragón

This is a seriously good film.

I read a few reviews and one reviewer had a good point, for a film also known as Mayhem, the action could have been more ongoing, like Wick 2,3,4 and Extraxtion 2. 'He' mentioned that you have to wait a bit for the action to get going. That is true, with some small action pieces and then BANG its on for young and old.

The fights are full on uncompromising, bloody and make your jaw hit the floor as you process what you are looking at.

So good!!

I eagerly await more from Xavier Gens and hope he works with Nassim Lyes again as this pairing was a winner from start to finish :)

No pun intended - a human is who he is. We are mostly unable to escape our true self. No matter the country we end up in ... our true colors will shine through. Of course if that means, you get to show off your fighting skills .. well that is very much appreciated.

Xavier Gens - he has done quite a few good movies. Some may argue it has been some time since his last good one. I will leave that judgement up to you. I know if you like action movies, you will have a field day here. The action choreography is really top notch. The level of violence through the roof ... the stunt people are quite known (tv show which I have not seen yet).

Main character is good, pacing may be a bit too slow for some I reckon ... but you can't have fighting all the time ... there needs to be some story in between ... even if it seems to lead nowhere ...

Let's get straight to the point. The fight scenes in this movie are amazing, some of the best I've seen. And I've seen a lot. I am well-versed on the artistry of movie fight scenes. This is about as clear and hard-hitting as they come.

You can see everything. You can feel the hits. You almost experience the pain felt by these characters. My jaw dropped repeatedly. And there are a bunch of cool shots and camera movements during the fights.

As for the rest of the movie, there really isn't much there. It's the most bare-bones revenge plot we've seen a thousand times. Technical aspects are more than fine, but there isn't much to latch onto.

You could argue the same about GOAT action movie The Raid: Redemption. The difference is, The Raid doesn't focus on that bare-bones story. 70% of the movie is action scenes. It's more like 10% in this movie. Action is scarce until the climax and most of the focus is on the uninteresting story.

My personal recommendation: watch only the hallway/elevator scene at the end.

(1 viewing, 1/15/2024)

The movie looked to me like a modern approach to a 90's scenario, which isn't something bad, I am just noticing it - one goes on a straight revenge over the bad guys.

We don't get to know the full story of Sam, but it's seems he is the typical French of non-French origin - involved in gang life. However, he decides to leave it, but as it's well known - you can't leave it if it doesn't leave you. So even in his attempt, unwillingly, he still stays a criminal which he never stops being - even after restarting everything in Thailand, the first big thing he wants to achieve in life, he tries it the criminal way, which brought all the consequences it could - one reckless decision.

The actor performs very good in the fighting scenes, they are a slight copy of the series of martial arts and raw violence movies from Indonesia (The Raid, The Raid 2, The Night Comes for us, Headshot etc.) which is fine, but is kind of obvious.

The acting is good, the music and the camera are fine. The Thai atmosphere is well recreated. It's overall a simple movie, but well-made and in case you have nothing better to watch or just need some good fighting one "Farang" ("Mayhem!") is worth it.

Mayhem!, efficiently directed by Xavier Gens is violent, melancholy and features two extendedly-bloody fight sequences. Unfortunately, Mayhem makes the cardinal sin of making you wait almost an hour for any of the fight choreography promised in the trailer to appear. The Mayhem part of the movie really only applies to the last 35 minutes. Thankfully, the fight choreography is punchy, bloody, violent, and framed in a way that will make anyone who's watched The Raid movies smile. The question is, does the roughly 45-50 minutes it takes to get to the goods worth it? Sort of. The story is simple, clichéd and has quite the melancholic ending. The fighting makes up about 20 or so minutes of the movie and for a 100 minute movie titled Mayhem, it's not enough.

HOWEVER, if you can relax and make it through you will enjoy what Gens and his stunt team put together. The final hallway fight into a gory melee in an elevator is stunning. It's the in your face brutality promised by the movies title and I had to watch it multiple times to revel in its glory. If only the pacing was tightened up Mayhem could have been up there with the greats. Until then, it's a fine Sunday afternoon watch if you don't have anything else to do.