This summer, MovieJawn is counting down our 25 favorite action movies of all time! We will be posting a new entry each day! See the whole list so far here.

by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer

Everything Everywhere All at Once (dir. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022), forgive the pun, has everything. There’s action, of course—including kung fu and powerful pinkie finger fights—but there’s also a love story, a mother-daughter reconciliation, a narrative about an immigrant family finding a life for themselves, and an argument for choosing joy.

Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known as the Daniels, EEAAO is their second feature, and my word, is it an ambitious one. They pull off a tightrope walk between genres, tones, and emotions, with a big margin for error, and yet the film never once slides into too much of any one thing. They’d previously directed Swiss Army Man and several music videos, including Turn Down for What, which sort of feels like a stylistic predecessor for this movie.

EEAAO follows Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), an exhausted Chinese woman who owns and runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), as they prepare for an audit. Things are tense between the couple, especially with Evelyn’s ailing father being with them to celebrate the New Year. Evelyn and Waymond’s daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), is also hoping to come out to her grandfather, which puts Evelyn on edge.

In the midst of all this, Evelyn discovers, at the IRS office no less, that she is being hunted by Jobu Tupaki, an incredibly powerful version of Joy from an alternate universe (known as the Alpha universe). Jobu’s lackeys descend on the IRS office, where Alpha Waymond takes over this universe’s Waymond’s body in order to help Evelyn. In order to make it past security, she begins to jump consciousness from other universes and fight her way through. 

The fight scenes in this film have an incredible energy to them. When Evelyn is first introduced to Alpha Waymond, who can fight well and defend her from other verse-jumpers, he’s impressively speedy and skilled with a fanny pack. Later on, we see Evelyn verse-jumping to a martial arts actress and a sign-spinner, two Evelyns well-equipped to fight off attackers. 

But it’s important to note that the action in EEAAO is also, well, silly. You don’t see many other characters need to complete a bizarre action in order to gain powers, but that’s exactly what people have to do in this film in order to jump from other universes and use those skills. You might need to switch your shoes to the opposite feet, try old chewing gum, or give yourself papercuts in order to jump. And when you see some attackers trying to sit on a phallic award, you get exactly what you think is about to happen: Two security officers fighting with buttplug-esque situations is quite the feat.

As the film goes on, the silliness ramps up, as does the action and the heart. The action sequences keep the blood flowing, but the silent rock scenes tug at your heartstrings (really)! Jobu’s everything-bagel blackhole is silly on its face, but seeing her argue with Evelyn about the pointlessness of everything, contrasted with Evelyn’s conversations with Waymond about how he finds meaning and joy in the silly, in the ordinary, is a powerful juxtaposition!

In a lot of action films, there’s a bad guy who receives deserved punishment for hurting innocent people. But in EEAAO, there’s no such thing. There’s facing how your actions hurt others, how choices can affect you and your family, but there’s no ultimate bad guy who must be defeated, even though that’s what other verse-jumpers think at the time, and what Alpha Waymond thinks about Jobu. Jobu’s not irredeemably evil. She just needs her mom to understand her.

I can’t write about this movie without talking about the cast. The Daniels’ writing and direction are great, but the actors make it sing. Michelle Yeoh is stupendous as Evelyn, as the Daniels knew she would be, having changed the part considerably for her. Ke Huy Quan makes every scene better as Waymond, and Stephanie Hsu takes the film by storm. Her entrance as Jobu, especially in contrast to how she acts as Joy, is a treat. Her audaciousness as Jobu versus the quiet disappointment of Joy is what sets the movie alight. Her audition video went viral, and it shows how capably she pulled off the role without the bells and whistles of costumes, makeup, and sets.

The making of the film is a marvel in and of itself. They shot most of the action at high frame rates, in order to slow down or speed up shots and make the fight scenes more kinetic in the edit. It also meant that the punches appeared to hit harder, sending assailants flying into the air for a long time, rather than a quick push. Likewise, it’s incredible that the visual effects were done by a dedicated team of five, rather than a traditional post-production house. That commitment from the whole team shows in the film product.

At its heart, EEAAO depicts the myriad lives a person could have and asks you, the viewer, to choose the life you have, to find joy in that life, and to value the people around you who make it worth living. It also asks that you treat everyone around you, even annoying IRS agents, with compassion. Evelyn’s able to stay grounded in her own life by focusing on the people around her. It’s a masterful attempt to filter out the endless distractions of life and give the audience a romp that is both heartbreaking and reaffirming, all while dazzling us with fight scenes and a world-ending conflict.

You don’t have to take my word on how good this film is. If you haven’t seen it, consider that it’s A24’s most successful film, having won seven of its eleven Academy Award nominations. Awards aren’t always a barometer for quality, but when a scrappy, imaginative film like this one gets recognized over studio juggernauts, it’s a good thing. At once specific and wildly entertaining, Everything Everywhere All at Once stands out in the action genre as an example of what films like this can achieve with imagination and flair.