Gareth Evans hasn’t made a movie in a while. That’s mostly because this flick has been in limbo more or less since the pandemic. Now that it’s finally arrived on Netflix, I can honestly say that while it is far from his best work, there are enough glimmers of gruesome action carnage here to make it worthwhile.
Tom Hardy stars as a dirty cop in a dirty city run by a dirty mayor (Forest Whitaker). When the mayor’s son (Justin Cornwell) winds up in the middle of a triad gang war, Hardy makes a deal with Whitaker to bring his son home. In return, his debt to Whitaker will be erased. That doesn’t sit well with Hardy’s even dirtier cop buddies, led by Timothy Olyphant, who want the kid dead for putting one of their own in the hospital. Things get complicated when the triad shows up looking for retribution.
Well, they all can’t be The Raid. Hell, they all can’t even be The Raid 2. While it takes a long time for Havoc to muster up some momentum, things perk up nicely during an epic nightclub brawl that features flashes of Edwards’ patented brand of cinematic violence. Hardy takes on a bunch of meat cleaver and machete-toting gang members, and the ensuing gory geysers of gurgling blood would make your typical horror flick blush. The finale, set at a snowy cabin in the woods, isn’t quite as frantically choreographed, but it does have a showstopping moment involving a speargun.
Hardy brings the same kind of twitchy intensity he brought to the Venom movies. Sometimes he slides into Nicolas Cage-style theatrics and over the top line readings (“I’M A FUCKING COP!”), which add to the fun. Olyphant is quite good too as the slick, steely-eyed villain.
Evans is one of the best action directors working today. The one-two-three punch of Merantau, The Raid, and The Raid 2 was about as close as anyone’s come to replicating John Woo’s trifecta of A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled. That said, Havoc is a good-not-great action flick that lacks the sustained intensity of Evans’ previous work. Then again, it’s a bit unfair to compare it to those action classics, even if it is a bit uneven. At any rate, it’s definitely well-worth checking out, especially for fans of bloody action brutality.
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