by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $14.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Zazie Beetz, Patricia Arquette, Heather Graham, Myha’la
Intro:
Derivative? Sure. Thinly written? Definitely. All kinds of over-the-top fun? Abso-bloody-lutely!
After generating buzz in his native Russia and the international film festival circuit with his features Why Don’t You Just Die! and No Looking Back, writer/director Kirill Sokolov is now making his English-language debut.
In the broadest terms, They Will Kill You is the story of housekeeper Asia (Zazie Beetz) starting work at the Virgil, a New York City high-rise that caters to the super-rich. Of course, there’s much more to Asia, the building and its residents than they appear at first blush.
Sokolov and his co-writer Alex Litvak use the backdrop and Asia’s place within it to comment on class divides, as well as building up the relationship between Asia and her sister Maria (Myha’la). Alas, the comments and the character drama are inoffensive and clearly pulled from other movies and rather sloppily at that.
Both the setting and the narrative drive are all kinds of Ready Or Not (and considering that film’s sequel is still in cinemas at time of writing, it feels surplus to requirements), there’s a faint sprinkling of the Irish/African-American cultural context of Sinners in the mix, and the amount of Tarantino cribbing throughout (primarily Kill Bill in its feminine revenge framing, and even a direct lift of the foot-licking gag from Death Proof) is glaring. You can’t be cooler than the corners where you source all your parts… as rapper Aesop Rock once said.
The Tarantino inspiration comes through in the presentation as well, but all of this is rather irrelevant as They Will Kill You is phenomenally entertaining just as an action flick. DP Isaac Bauman’s camerawork and framing shows creativity in capturing the many rooms, hallways, and vents of the Virgil, while the stunt work led by Russ McCarroll and Kerry Gregg is not only given visual room to show off the gorgeous choreography, but makes the film’s numerous combat scenes a grin-inducing joy to watch. To say nothing of the effects work from Crafty Apes, which has its odd cheesy moment (like a hilariously unconvincing severed head) but delivers on the bloodspray and some particularly inventive uses of gore. The story exists to string together these set pieces, of which there are a lot packed into an hour and a half… but when they look this good, it’s hard to get too mad about much.
They Will Kill You is a gleefully-bloody example of why style over substance isn’t inherently a bad thing. The drama is milquetoast, the plot is predictable, and whatever insights it has about class are more requisite than passionate. But man oh man, seeing Kirill Sokolov and co. go all in with these action scenes earns this a recommendation in spite of the surrounding flaws. Derivative? Sure. Thinly written? Definitely. All kinds of over-the-top fun? Abso-bloody-lutely!
