Everly movie poster
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Everly
Everly movie poster

Everly Movie Review

Now available on Blu-ray and DVD (Buy on Amazon)

When you try to make a Quentin Tarantino movie and you’re not Quentin Tarantino, Everly happens. Salma Hayek has never been less interesting than in this hammy, poorly made and ill-conceived action-thriller, about a woman who must fend off legions of assassins sent by her mob boss ex-boyfriend.

Tarantino may be a poor comparison, as director Joe Lynch probably would have settled for a Robert Rodriguez comparison, but one can’t but help to think that Everly was conceived while screenwriter Yale Hannon was watching the Crazy 88 scene in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and thought:

  1. How cool it would be to make something similar, only have it set in an apartment, not a restaurant.
  2. Wouldn’t it be great to have my 10-year-old son scribble some things on paper and turn it into a screenplay.

Everly has tons of action, so if you’re one of those people who can ignore painful dialogue, low-budget-and-it-shows direction and everything else that is wrong with the world and simply enjoy awkwardly constructed gun and knife fight sequences--you’ll fucking love this movie.

But seriously, Everly is one of those movies where the filmmakers clearly thought they were making something better than it actually is. The core concept--a woman trapped in her own home and forced to fend off intruders--is solid, but everything that follows simply lacks the energy, the absurdity and the skill to execute the idea. A scene where Lynch has Hayek fighting a man at the far end of a hallway while the elevator door opens and closes to reveal and hide the violence that is about to occur screams of attempting to do something cool and eye catching--and failing miserably at it.

Everly is a movie made of dreams--dreams of filmmaking talent one doesn’t possess, of awesomeness that was just never meant to be.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.

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