What happens when two sides face off and neither side has a line they won’t cross to get what they want?

Heroes sit this one out because Deliver Us From Evil is a film about the baddest of the bad. Deep inside the criminal underbelly, a notorious hitman named Kim In-nam (Hwang Jung-min) has just finished a job taking out a Japanese mobster. As he returns home from his last assignment, he discovers that someone from his past has been killed in a human smuggling scheme and her daughter has been taken. It turns out the girl is also the daughter of In-nam himself. As In-nam goes to the dark world of human trafficking in the city of Thailand, another piece of his past is back for vengeance. Ray, the homicidal brother of the Japanese mobster he just killed who is even more dangerous than his brother. In-nam is under the gun from all angles in a race to save his daughter.

The beauty of a film like Deliver Us From Evil is that unlike other films that fetishize the criminal underground, this film displays it in all of it’s brutal reality. Our main character of In-nam, a brutal but effective assassin sees the world of human trafficking, organ harvesting, and organized crime through a lens that even someone like him pities its realities. In-nam is a man dealing with the direct fallout of his actions, the people that he kills creates a domino effect of misery that leads right back to him. 

All credit to director and screenwriter Hong Won-Chan who masterfully puts together one of the most well crafted action films of the year. The supporting cast does an amazing job at world building this universe of good and evil. Park Jung-min plays Yui, a transgender street walker who is the humanity of the film full of monsters. The writing does a great job to make Yui sympathetic without being insulting. Yui’s pain mirrors the reality of living amongst Thailand’s worst criminals while providing her character with a path of redemption.

Lee Jung-jae as Ray is a stone cold killer who is noted for his horrific lack of humanity. The parallels between In-nam and Lee create an intriguing dynamic between the characters, both equally brutal in their methods of killing with the only difference being Lee’s more sinister nature. However, the characters are so alike it makes In-nam reflect on his own morals creating an almost poetic perfect ending for the fates of both men. 

Deliver Us From Evil is a high caliber action film that excels in storytelling, character, cinematography, and stunt choreography. 

 

4.5/5

 

 

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