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.
The rechristening also advertises the movie’s tonal confusion: Mayhem! manages to be grounded enough not to work in knowingly over-the-top or gonzo-operatic registers while still not ever feeling remotely believable on a scene-to-scene basis. Director and co-writer Xavier Gens stages the various physical confrontations clearly and capably, with a fashionably tilt-happy camera, but he’s more interested in backing Lyes, a real-life athlete, into a series of tight corners than showcasing either his personality or his physicality as an action star. The fights mirror this flatness; for all their showy gore, they never develop beyond their visceral brutality. Late in the movie, Sam performs a kill with such spectacularly gnarly originality that it reveals much of the rest as mere filler by comparison.
When Gens does attempt to extract a little visual poetry from the less bloody moments – a post-explosion shot of Sam slowly flailing underwater; the neon-lit luridness of a Thai sex-club strip – it feels disingenuous, even leering. The plot twists, such as they are, are more like panicked convolutions, desperate attempts to lend emotional legitimacy to a movie that seemingly has little idea just how sleazy it can feel to dangle potential child abuse like a carrot in front of action fans. It all amounts to a feedback loop of narrative excuses to go nuts, then inspiring faux-humane reasons to pull back. If you want to make a slasher-level action-mayhem movie, make the damn movie; don’t pretend your excuses for ultraviolence come from a humanist core. Mayhem! yearns to be taken seriously in all the wrong places.
Director: Xavier Gens
Writer: Xavier Gens, Magali Rossitto
Starring: Nassim Lyes, Loryn Nounay, Olivier Gourmet, Chananticha Tang-Kwa
Release Date: January 5, 2024
Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including Polygon, Inside Hook, Vulture, and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out about what he’s watching or listening to, and which terrifying flavor of Mountain Dew he has most recently consumed.