Deliver Us from Evil (2020)

Posted in Reviews by - January 01, 2021
Deliver Us from Evil (2020)

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.

This post was written by
Editor and creator of Kung Fu Movie Guide and the host of the Kung Fu Movie Guide Podcast. I live behind a laptop in London, UK.

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