Mayhem!

An exclamation point in a title is a promise. The first action flick of the year is not called “Mayhem,” it’s called “Mayhem!” You’re supposed to yell it excitedly as you buy your ticket. Although it would more accurately be called “Mayhem?” 

Because the fact is that vicious genre director Xavier Gens doesn’t fulfill on the punctuation in his premise, especially in the interminable first half of the film, which starts with a bang that portends “The Raid”-esque non-stop action and then spins its wheels in set-up that feels like it takes forever. Once the action does pick up again, presuming you’re still awake, there are a few undeniably impressive sequences, including another hallway brawl that feels thinly inspired by “Oldboy” and a spectacular battle with knives and guns in the close quarters of an elevator. These bursts of visceral power aren’t enough to get over the film’s many lulls or how much time is spent in service of a bare-bones, cheaply manipulative vengeance plot that never deepens its stakes to feel anything but two-dimensional. Maybe it should have been called “… Mayhem.”