To be completely transparent, Gareth Evans’ return to action filmmaking with Havoc could've turned out better. The characters are remarkably underdeveloped, the dialogues feel like an AI program wrote them, and the world itself is so ill-defined that, at first, this tale of corruption may not seem entertaining after all. It doesn’t help Evans’ case that, in making a movie for Netflix, he essentially must write dialogues that allow audiences to multitask instead of focusing at the screen, resulting in a discombobulated police intrigue that, at best, has one or two impassioned moments from its star-studded cast, and, at worst, doesn’t feel like a real movie.
Evans’ claim to fame as a genre artist was his The Raid series, which not only put him on the map but opened audiences’ eyes to the raw talent of Iko Uwais as a bona fide star. These films were not only highly influential in modern action filmmaking but also paved the way for action as a genre to be accepted as a singular art form, after John Woo opened the doors for many film enthusiasts to analyze the poetics of his style and approach to “gun-fu.” After all, action is emotion and is often the only form of catharsis worthy to be experienced on a big screen, especially when its core sequences stimulate our senses.
Yet, for a good chunk of Havoc’s lean 100-minute runtime, the movie’s video-game-like choreography of CGI-driven car chase sequences isn't executed well. Evans certainly nails the aesthetic of a grimy, unnamed town filled with corruption, not only at the political level through the figure of Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), but also within the police force and among our protagonist, Walker (Tom Hardy). The car chase that opens the film and sets its chain of events is passable at best, because it feels like a cutscene straight out of Grand Theft Auto V rather than something we saw from Gareth Evans in his The Raid duology, and even during brief action beats in his 2018 horror film Apostle.
For about an hour, the action takes a backseat for some flimsy plotting, which essentially involves Lawrence’s son, Charlie (Justin Cornwell), being framed for the murder of a high-ranking Chinese triad gang boss, and Walker tasked to find him as the politician threatens to publicize information that could jeopardize his career in the police. We get a sense of what he did as a corrupt police officer, though it isn’t fully fleshed out as it should be, giving us hints of his past instead of the full picture. When Walker finds out exactly who murdered the gang boss, the situation becomes more complicated than he had anticipated, and he is now unable to trust anyone, especially his former partner Vincent (Timothy Olyphant), who may not be entirely honest with him.
Flimsy Plotting, Incredible Action
The bouts of exposition are moderately interesting, only because Hardy channels his inner Eddie Brock as a no-nonsense cop with telegraphed demons in his closet that likely won’t be resolved by the time the film cuts the credits. He’s the main reason why the movie stays moderately interesting when Evans doesn’t go all out on action, because we never know how he will register a line, sometimes unpredictably loud and voracious, other times morbidly funny and nail-biting. It’s pure Hardy, playing a character that’s well within his comfort zone, and having fun with the modulations he gives to him.
Though one can’t say the same for the bevy of supporting characters that populate this film, people with zero personality apart from the one-note attributes they’re stuck in for the remainder of the runtime, with the exception of Jessie Mei Lee as Officer Cheung, a fierce and emotionally invested side protagonist who finds her own agency as she uncovers more clues related to the case at-hand. I won’t spoil any of the narrative developments that Havoc takes, but the one who gets the most time to shine before its thrilling climax is Cheung, particularly during a specific moment worthy of Chow Yun-fat at his prime, making action art in Lau Kar-leung’s Tiger on the Beat.
In fact, it’s only when Havoc reaches its hour-long point and sets up a large-scale fight set in a nightclub that the movie begins to open up and offer a relentless opera of carnage that’s simultaneously cathartic in its adrenaline-fueled bloody violence that grows cartoonishly over-the-top, and artful in its poetry of slow-motion shots and precise, balletic movements that are plucked straight out of John Woo’s filmography. Woo frequently cited Sam Peckinpah as one of his main influences, and the climax of Havoc can only accurately be described as what would happen if Woo, Peckinpah, and Ringo Lam had the chance to collaborate together.
One can’t exactly describe it in words—it’s the cacophony of strobe lights created by bullet flashes, practical blood that flies in the environment as if it becomes a shade of paint, and the non-stop fires of people getting shot so violently that, once they’re on the ground, there’s absolutely nothing left. What’s even better is how Evans deftly blends the nastiest possible violence into pure slapstick, particularly when staging one-on-one confrontations between Walker and a revolving door of disposable antagonists who each bring unique skills in battle. One of them sees Walker go toe-to-toe with an expert martial artist, leading Evans to momentarily pause the gunfire for us to observe the intricate choreography on display, ending on a note so sickening that the only natural response to such visceral perversion may very well be laughter.
It’s Evans’ naturally gifted talent at staging such incredibly mounted and often hilarious action that saves Havoc from being nothing more than a disposable piece of “content” released on Netflix. It may not have the most inspired screenplay in the world, and it certainly doesn’t have great performances that emotionally anchor this remarkably hokey story, but it knows where it needs to succeed. That’s why the only thing you’ll truly remember from this picture is its last hour, so violently nasty that it not only reaffirms Evans’ place in the pantheon of great visual artists, but shows a reinvention of his talents eleven years after giving us the greatest action movie ever made…
HAVOC is currently streaming on Netflix.