Mayhem! Is an Action Movie Looking for an Excuse

The titles of most movies are relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and that’s especially true of gritty action programmers designed to deliver a cathartic fantasy of ultraviolence doled out justly. But Mayhem! is the rare action movie where the title tells you everything – though not with the blunt-force directness of Revenge, Shoot ‘Em Up or, dare to dream, Snakes on a Plane. In fact, Mayhem!‘s original title is the more evocative Farang, which is a Thai word meaning outsider of Western or European origins. That’s how multiple people refer to Sam (Nassim Lyes), a French man who is about to be released from prison – until a violent confrontation during a furlough forces him to flee his country.

Five years later, Sam has rebuilt a life in Thailand with Mia (Loryn Nounay) and her young daughter Dara (Chananticha Tang-Kwa), who he parents as his own. But when his status as a farang without proper papers scuttles the family’s attempt to buy a parcel of land, Sam uneasily agrees to do a minor-sounding job for fellow expat Narong (Olivier Gourmet). And when the job is botched, Narong sends men after Sam’s family, which in turn sends Sam (who is also a competitive boxer, mind) on a rampage. This, after a protracted set-up as a ground-level crime picture without much credibility, is how Mayhem! lives up its title, with a flurry of stabbings, slashings, smashings, crackings and the kind of righteous furor that can only be invoked by the specter of child trafficking.

That’s the principle engine of the film’s suspense: Not whether children will be rescued, but to what degree Sam’s family will be forced to serve as props for his angst and, more importantly, his righteous vengeance. The movie quickly – well, not that quickly; there’s a lot of that handheld-shot set-up – and prioritizes clichés over character, sometimes even over the basic meanings of words. (“It would not bring your family back,” someone warns Sam of, uh, his plan to rescue a member of his family.) So while it’s not fair to blame filmmakers for marketing decisions, the change in title from Farang to an exclamatory Mayhem! does feel like an honest expression of what the movie is after; it could only feel more accurate if the title change could somehow happen about halfway through the movie, when it really kicks into seedy-underbelly overdrive.