By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Zazie Beetz, Myha’la and Patricia Arquette
Directed by Kirill Sokolov
Written by Kirill Sokolove and Alex Litvak
New Line/Warner Bros.
In THEY WILL KILL YOU, Zazie Beetz is fierce but the beats have been seen too many times before—and not only just last weekend, when the very similarly themed READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME opened. It’s the sort of movie that makes for a great grindhouse-esque trailer (see below), but doesn’t fill in the details between bursts of showy violence with anything terribly memorable.
A prologue introduces us to Beetz’s Asia Reaves character as a teenager, fleeing with her younger sister Maria from their white-trash dad, with a tragic outcome. Before you have time to contemplate how this obvious redneck wound up fathering two African-American daughters, we rejoin Asia 10 years later in New York City (filmed on location in Cape Town), arriving at an exclusive building called The Virgil. She’s ostensibly taking a new job as a maid, but from the metallic clanks inside her luggage, it’s clear she’s on a very different mission. And in fact, the mission comes to her: She has barely laid down for a bit of sleep before her room is invaded by a masked and cloaked intruder with murderous intent. And he’s not alone.
The stage is thus set for Asia to discover that the Virgil is occupied by a band of Satanists anxious to make her their latest sacrifice. They’re not prepared for her particular set of skills, however, and their first big brawl announces both Beetz’s physical prowess and director Kirill Sokolov’s aggressive style. Her hyperathletic moves and his swirling camerawork and intense close-ups, along with gushing crimson reminiscent of early-2000s J-gore cinema, get the viewer’s adrenaline pumping and promise a rousing good time to come. Then the film pulls a key twist (skip to the next paragraph if you want to avoid the SPOILER): Asia’s opponents are immortal, able to reconstitute themselves from even the most extreme damage. This is evidently intended to raise the stakes, but has the opposite effect; if they can survive whatever grievous bodily harm Asia lays on them, then their defeats have little weight or meaning as they keep coming back for more.
There’s one more strong setpiece in which Asia takes on her attackers with a flaming weapon in a darkened room, which brings a bit of visual distinction to an overall scenario with many familiar elements. As our heroine’s surname emphasizes, the JOHN WICK franchise is an influence here, as are THE RAID and DIE HARD with their fight-through-a-building scenarios. (Asia is even barefoot like John McClane, though this movie never does anything with that potential liability.) There’s also plenty of extreme splatstick and fun with body parts à la the EVIL DEAD films and Peter Jackson’s BRAINDEAD/DEAD ALIVE, and the best running gag involves an eyeball (plus optic nerve) that has a curious life of its own.
With all those inspirations in the mix, THEY WILL KILL YOU never develops a personality of its own, and neither do any of the characters. Beetz, who previously showed off her action bona fides to DEADPOOL 2, BULLET TRAIN and others, brings plenty of fire and determination as she leaps to top billing, but beyond Asia’s commitment to her purpose, there’s not much to the role. As the grown-up Maria and object of Asia’s rescue mission, Myha’la (BODIES BODIES BODIES) makes the most of the few moments the script by Sokolov and Alex Litvak gives her. Patricia Arquette (speaking with an uneven Oirish accent) as Lily, leader and spokesperson of the baddies, and Paterson Joseph as her husband Ray, who’s having second thoughts about their century-old rituals, have one good scene together hinting at greater socioracial depth that the movie doesn’t bother to further explore.
The whole premise, in fact, is built on a foundation of class and race consciousness that’s only dealt with in the most superficial ways. That wouldn’t matter as much if THEY WILL KILL YOU really delivered where it counts; instead, the action becomes repetitive even in its outrageousness, the villains lack the kind of distinction that would really get us rooting against them and the dialogue is similarly pedantic, with lots of unimaginatively profane threats and trash talk. It’s a shame that the human dynamo at this movie’s center hasn’t here been given a vehicle worthy of her.
