Butler's Cinema Scene

“EVERLY” My rating: B-

92 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Few things speak more directly to a man’s reptilian brain than a beautiful woman firing  a big honking gun.

By that reckoning, “Everly”  is the exploitation equivalent of “Citizen Kane.”

The latest from writer/director Joe Lynch (who specializes in high-end “bad” films…see his “Wrong Turn 2: Dead End”) finds the ever-luscious Salma Hayek portraying Everly, a woman who for several years has been kept in sexual slavery by the leader of a Japanese crime gang.

The film starts in darkness with the brutal sounds of Everly being raped by several men. Then she stumbles naked into a bathroom, lifts the lid off the back of the toilet and retrieves an automatic pistol in a waterproof bag.

The first rapist who comes pounding on the door for more action gets perforated for his trouble. Then our girl mows down a half dozen more of the creeps who’ve been lounging around the apartment which has been her prison.

“Everly” takes place in 90 real-time minutes as the titular character desperately tries to contact her estranged mother (Laura Cepeda), who has been caring for Everly’s young daughter (Aisha Ayamah).

Meanwhile she must defend herself not only from wave after wave of assassins, but from the prostitutes in adjacent apartments who hope to claim the bounty on her head.

Akie Kotabe, Salma Hayek

Among the deadly visitors she must contend with are an dapper-looking older gentleman in a white suit who cheerfully identifies himself as  Sadist (Togo Igawa) and produces a satchel filled with acids he is eager to apply to Everly’s flawless  epidermis. He brings with him four figures in full samurai/Kabuki outfits and a gibbering, half-naked man  known as Masochist.

Everly also finds an unexpected ally in an inoffensive mob bookeeper (Akie Kotabe) who was paralyzed in the opening gunfire and now spends his final moments offering survival advice.

In the end it all boils down to a mano-a-mano collision between Everly and her sword-wielding gangster/lover (Hiroyuki Watanabe).

With its astonishingly high body count (I stopped keeping track at 20), buckets of blood, black humor and general badass attitude, “Everly” is an action geek’s wet dream.

Particularly effective is director Lynch’s use of a single set — an apartment and the hallway outside — to create a claustrophobic battleground.

I could have done with a bit more substance, but that’s a minority view. When you’re feasting on barbecue you don’t expect a side order of veggies. (“Greens? I don’t got to show you no stinkin’ greens.”)

| Robert W. Butler