Brawl Games

Kingpins and wannabes barrel through the London underworld.

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HEY, DO YOU WANT to do a logic problem?

Imagine you’re a London gang member who has gone into a hideout to retrieve a missing person whose continued existence on earth is critically important to your employers. You reach a small room at the end of a long, dark hallway. Waiting inside is a member of the other gang. He has a bullethead, a leering grin, the shoulders of an ox, linebacker thighs, and no discernible neck. He is covered in grime and blood and wearing nothing but boxer briefs. Your furtive glances around the room confirm that this is a charnel house where the man tortures and kills people with (it appears) any weapon or household implement that strikes his fancy. The man is holding a meat cleaver. You’re unarmed. He’s blocking the only exit. The only way out is through him. What do you do?

Such head-scratchers-of-the-damned are the specialty of writer–director– producer–fight choreographer Gareth Evans, the mastermind of the Raid films. They are also the barbaric soul of