Havoc Review: Gareth Evans Retreads The Raid in Bone-Crunching, Familiar Actioner

Tom Hardy simultaneously fights corrupt cops and the Triad from the director of The Raid is, on paper, a pretty amazing pitch. Marrying Hardy’s gruff pivot back to genre fare––i.e. MobLand––after a number of years in the Venom wilderness with Evans’ ability to frame and shoot insane action scenes automatically makes Havoc stand out from the rest of Netflix’s algorithmic output. 

Yet after a truly wild swing towards folk horror with 2018’s Apostle––Evans’ first film with Netflix and, I’d argue, his best––Havoc cannot help suggesting a regression for the gifted filmmaker. Propulsive, comically bloody, and more than a little stupid, Havoc fits comfortably alongside Extraction, Heart of Stone, The Mother, and the fifteen other Netflix action originals that you forgot existed. Is it a little better than many of those? Sure. Evans knows how to choreograph action with the best of them. It also features two of the most exhilarating, bone-crunching set-pieces I’ve seen since, probably, The Raid 2. But outside those 20-or-so minutes, the film chugs along with a hackneyed script that feels like a fill-in-the-blank prompt. It’s obvious where Evans’ interests lie; the rest is just filler. 

Hardy’s corrupt homicide detective, Walker, is roped into finding the estranged son of Forrest Whitaker’s mayor. The son, Charlie (Justin Cornwell), has found himself running from a number of groups after stealing drugs from the Triad in the opening scene, setting off an all-night chase between Hardy, Timothy Olyphant’s other corrupt cop, and the Triad. All three are essentially locked in an escalating series of run-ins that continue to get bloodier and gnarlier as we go along. 

Not that anyone is hitting the Havoc tile for its plot––something of which Evans seems acutely aware. Knowing this, the film begins in medias res as Charlie and his girlfriend Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) are being chased by the cops while driving an 18-wheeler, setting a hyper-violent tone early––even if the chase leans far too heavily on shoddy CGI and a grain filter that makes everything look just a little too dingy. For a film so laser-focused on making sure you feel every broken bone, it’s odd that the CGI is so third-rate. 

But those coming in directly from The Raid will probably not be disappointed. Bullets fly at an alarming rate with each nameless bad guy having to be shot at least ten times to die, gallons of blood splattering in every possible direction. Evans is clearly having fun coming up with increasingly crazier ways for Hardy to dispatch the NPCs that take him on, including a particularly gnarly kill with a fishing hook best left unspoiled.

Not much can be said about Hardy, who grunts his way through the interstitial scenes like a man desperate to get to the good stuff, a habit reflected in the filmmaking. He’s fine, even impressive in the action scenes, but never exactly interesting––not that Havoc really cares about this character. An early subplot about Walker being a terrible father to his kid––on Christmas Eve no less––goes absolutely nowhere. Some oddly pretentious voiceover that begins the film is jettisoned so quickly it leaves one to wonder if it was tacked on in post-production. Whitaker is doing a variation of his Godfather of Harlem character, while Olyphant seems somewhat miscast as a cop even more corrupt than Hardy. All the other characters, save for Jessie Mei Li’s do-gooder rookie Ellie, are essentially just pieces to be moved around to create choreographed chaos. 

Is Havoc good? Kind of. It knows what it is and doesn’t try to be anything more than a hyper-stylized, incredibly violent chase movie. Those looking for something similar to the Raid films will find much to enjoy here. It’s also a lesser version of those movies, leaving one to wonder why Evans returned to the well this time. Following the delirious highs of The Raid 2, it made sense for Evans to shift genres, having accomplished one of the most impressive action movies in recent memory. Havoc cannot help, then, but feel like a degraded photocopy. But if only for those two scenes––one taking place at a nightclub, the other at a lake house––there’s enough to recommend here. 

Havoc begins streaming on Netflix on April 25.