Mayhem!

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.

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 ...

The European problem is not really a European problem. And one of these problems as an embodied problem solver, difficult fare? Had I considered this film choice carefully?

France, the country of origin, is probably at the top of the Lost Countries, bearing the rotten fruits of its dirty-golden years like no other nation. Fortunately, despite the bitterness, a change of scenery. Thailand. A little martial arts, even more idyllic holiday atmosphere. Everything could be fine now, but unfortunately the cobbler sticks to his last. Prototype: it has to be a lot very quickly, with as little effort as possible. So let's say impatience is in this blood, only evil tongues speak of criminal energy.

Enough negative energy, after the first quarter we get to see a real action pearl, a dramatic 90s Van Damme story build-up, which then leads to a 2010s The Raid-style battle. Yes, the finale is the same as always with these films, but it's somehow essential fan service. Comparisons with the current "Sixty Minutes" are legitimate, but France can do it better than Germany, wild Bangkok versus overrated Berlin is also self-explanatory, and so are learned martial arts skills versus martial arts history. However, it's nice that films like this still exist.

I had waited months for this to come be available in North America. I had high expectations given the episodes from Gangs of London and Frontieres. The last 20 mins was well choreographed and as violent as I would have expected the rest of the movie to be, in the end felt like some missed opportunities to ratchet up the action. Some of the locations were amazing. Overall worth it fro the elevator scene! The story felt way too dramatic when in reality it was a cookie cutter revenge story. Not sure about the lead actor - he was good in the action scenes but the dramatic parts were too drawn out.

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 :)