A down-and-out detective untangles the mess behind a brutal gangland slaying in Havoc, an over-the-top new action-thriller from The Raid: Redemption director Gareth Evans now streaming on Netflix. This one features a contrived and often illogical narrative but enough brutal slam-bang action to warrant a recommendation for genre fans—though even the action comes with some reservations.
Havoc stars Tom Hardy as Walker, a homicide detective who berates green partner Ellie (Jessie Mei Li) for getting involved in a domestic disturbance when they should be out solving murders. His wish will soon be granted when the pair are called to the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong involving the Chinese triad, a quartet of young street hoods, and masked gunmen carrying assault rifles.
Walker happens to recognize one of the hoodlums from surveillance footage: Charlie (Justin Cornwell), estranged son of embattled Mayor Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker). Beaumont blackmails Walker into finding his son and bringing him home safely; out to do the opposite are the triad and a trio of narcotics officers led by Vincent (Timothy Olyphant), who are out for revenge after a cop is left hospitalized in Charlie’s wake.
This setup should be simple, but an overly contrived narrative leads to large swaths of exposition taking center stage across much of the first half of the film. But the back end rectifies this with two dynamite prolonged action scenes, the first set in a music club as Walker protects Charlie’s girlfriend Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) from deadly assassins, the second as they’re ambushed at Walker’s lakeside cabin.
The action scenes in Havoc are elaborately staged and choreographed, recalling the director’s The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2, two of the best action movies ever made. But they are also haphazardly shot—drenched in darkness and utilizing the kind of shaky-cam that went out of style a decade ago—and poorly composited in post-production, with sub-standard squib work and other digital effects.
Still, these scenes pack enough of a punch to satisfy on visceral action movie terms, and Havoc includes enough in terms of bone-breaking, blood-spurting practical effects to outweigh the negatives. In terms of martial arts moves, Hardy may be no Iko Uwais, but he’s still an imposing screen presence, and the movie plays to his character’s strengths as an all-too-human anti-hero.
The less thought spared towards Havoc’s narrative, meanwhile, the better. Hardy’s lead is largely tangential to the storyline—but then again, so are most of the other characters. The real meat of the story seems to unfold in the background, between the mother (Yann Yann Yeo) of a slain triad boss (Jeremy Ang Jones) and the lieutenant (Sunny Pang) who has betrayed her. The strength of these characters’ dynamic suggests that they should have been the real focus here.
The look of Havoc feels anachronistically artificial in nature, with an overly-processed look that includes a heavy sheen of faux film grain, a high-contrast color scheme, and synthetic digital backgrounds. It recalls early 2000s action movies like Sin City and Max Payne more than the director’s trailblazing action movies that came afterward.
The look of the film also helps give Havoc a strangely anonymous feel that deprives the film from any kind of authenticity. We infer from accents and technology that the story is set in the contemporary United States (it was actually shot in Cardiff, Wales), but the setting is so vague these events could be unfolding anywhere, at any time. The film is set at Christmas, but unlike Die Hard or Lethal Weapon, there are almost no visual or audio cues to underscore this fact, only passing references in dialogue.
Havoc was originally filmed in 2021 and reportedly suffered multiple post-production delays due to reshoots; the finished film quite clearly reflects post-production issues. But while this may not be as good as writer-director Evans’ Raid movies, or even his previous film for Netflix, the queasy horror movie The Apostle, Havoc still bears the touches of a talented filmmaker behind the camera. For action fans with tempered expectations, this one still scratches the itch.
