A decent, well-paced and visually accomplished revenge thriller from South Korea, filmed mostly in Japan and Thailand. Hwang Jung-min plays the hard-drinking, nihilistic assassin In-nam who hangs up his killing boots with dreams of retiring to Panama after one last hit involving a Yakuza scumbag in Tokyo. Of course, as is the tradition with this sort of action film, he reliably takes another case when his estranged daughter is kidnapped and his ex-flame winds up in a Bangkok morgue. A range of subplots start to converge; one featuring a lucrative organ trafficking syndicate involved in the kidnapping, aided by corrupt cops; another involving a trans woman (Park Jung-min) who buddies up with In-nam following a similar desire to escape; and another involving psychopathic Yakuza thug ‘Ray the Butcher’ (Lee Jung-jae), a flamboyant, nightmarish torture freak seemingly sprung from a Takashi Miike slasher on a separate, vengeful quest to kill In-nam. You’ve kind of seen all of this before, but writer-director Hong Won-chan does well to craft sympathetic characters, genuine pathos, a consistent tone with wonderful mise-en-scène, and action sequences which really zip along, including car chases, big shootouts and close-combat knife fights – all expertly pieced together. Impressive stuff.

Deliver Us from Evil is released 4 January 2021 on digital in the UK courtesy of Signature Entertainment.