It didn’t take long for the first ‘action movie of the year’ candidate to emerge. “Mayhem!” (and yes, the exclamation point is included) is a blistering action thriller fueled by ferocious fight choreography yet laced with an unexpected dose of heart. While its American title doesn’t do it any favors (it released as “Farang” elsewhere), director Xavier Gens delivers big where it counts, taking his time getting where he’s going and then rewarding our patience with an explosive payoff.

The movie’s centerpiece is its chiseled French-Algerian star, Nassim Lyes. The 35-year-old former MMA fighter and kickboxer comes packaged with a simmering intensity and remarkable physicality which is exactly what his character demands. The story around him seems to pull from a number of inspirations including Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet”, 2011’s “The Raid”, and even a few dashes of “John Wick”. It may not match up with those heralded films, but it’s plenty strong enough to stand on its own.

Lyes plays Samir Darba, a quiet and solemn young man with a troubled background. We first meet him in a Paris prison where he has worked hard to straighten himself out while learning to resist his urge towards violence. Samir’s good behavior pays off and he is granted a day parole. He immediately looks to stabilize himself by finding a steady job to help him stay out of trouble. But it doesn’t take long before his past comes back to haunt him. An old contact jumps him as he’s on his way back to the penitentiary. Samir kills the thug in an act of self-defense. But knowing how it looks and fearing the consequences, he decides to flee France.

Five years later we see Samir working on a boat near Bang Chan in East Thailand. He has seemingly left his old life behind (yea right) and found happiness in the cozy little fishing village. He’s found a wife, Mia (Loryn Nounay) and together they have a young daughter Dara (Chananticha Tang-Kwa) and a baby on the way. To help pay the bills and save some money, Samir also works as a baggage handler and van driver for a luxury hotel. And he does some kickboxing on the side, occasionally throwing a fight for a greedy and crooked local promoter.

Samir and Mia have been eyeing some gorgeous oceanfront property with dreams of opening their own beachside restaurant. But just as they’re ready to purchase, they learn they’ve been outbid by a Frenchman named Narong (played by the great Olivier Gourmet). He turns out to be a powerful crime lord who offers Samir a proposal – successfully deliver a small amount of drugs and the property is theirs. Without telling Mia, Samir accepts the job, seeing it as the only way for him and his family to realize their dream.

Of course the drop goes terribly bad with Samir barely managing to escape. Knowing the consequences of failure, he rushes home to get his family to safety, but Narong’s goons arrive before they can leave. A savagely violent fight ensues that leaves the pregnant Mia stabbed to death, Dara kidnapped, and a severely wounded Samir left for dead. Samir survives after he is found by his trainer and father figure Hansa (the really good Vithaya Pansringarm) who nurses him back to health.

As you can probably guess, Samir doesn’t sit idly by. He sets out on a personal mission to save Dara and dole out punishment on those who killed his wife and unborn child. In some ways it plays like a conventional revenge story. But Samir does a good job selling us a tortured father who’s desperate to get back his young daughter. It adds an extra dramatic layer to the story and helps to earn our empathy for his plight.

But the movie’s meat and potatoes is the action. Gens keeps things surprisingly subdued for much of the way, content to feed us morsels and leaving us hungry for the main course. You could make a case that he waits a little too long, leaving us wondering when the movie is going to finally let Samir (and Lyes) off his chain. It finally does and it proves to be worth the wait. The fight scenes in the kinetic final act are intensely violent and downright brutal with blood-splattering and bones-cracking galore. Lyes is an absolute force while Gens, DP Gilles Porte, and editor Riwanon Le Beller skillfully frame and shoot the sequences with style and energy.

The final 20 minutes offer up a hard-hitting (literally and figuratively) punctuation mark to a story that has its slow patches but knows how to stick its landing. Gens does a good job unpacking his story while slipping in some not-so-subtle commentary on child abduction and sex trafficking. The film also looks great, shooting on a number of immersive locations. But everything comes back to the action which takes a while to kick into gear. But once it does, Gens puts the pedal down and (again) flexes his prowess as an action filmmaker.

VERDICT – 4 STARS