Havoc hits Netflix after a few years of bouncing through development snags, industry work stoppages, and finally a round of reshoots. Or maybe rounds and more-shoots? Because firepower is one thing not lacking in Havoc, written and directed by Gareth Evans of The Raid and The Raid 2 fame. Nor is rainfall lacking – the nameless big city where this film is set must have a really bad case of trench foot. And Havoc doesn’t lack talent, either, with Tom Hardy leading the way, Timothy Olyphant, Forest Whitaker, and Jessie Mei Li in support, and Luis Guzmán, Xelia Mendes-Jones, and former MMA fighter Michelle Waterson-Gomez appearing in character roles. It does lack any single solitary dimension other than death and destruction. But it’s not like anyone lied to us about that. Havoc is right in the name.
The Gist: “Choices you try to justify,” Wilson (Hardy) is telling us in a voiceover – and in one of Tom Hardy’s more conventional American accents – that sounds as waterlogged and beleaguered as the unnamed city where he lives. Walker’s city is a corrupt place where it always rains, where it always stays congested with people going nowhere, and where choices always go to die.
And while Wilson is a cop, when we meet him, the decidedly non-cop havoc of this film’s title is already popping off. Drugs, murders, and blood money, all in play and adjacent to Wilson, plus fellow detectives like Vincent (Olyphant), and Lawrence Beaumont (Whitaker), the white collar criminal/mayoral candidate for whom they do dirty work. None of these guys are helping the present situation – they’re only trying to find some gain in all of what’s broken. The broken list includes Wilson’s relationship with his wife and little daughter, who we meet for two seconds between gun battles.
Ellie (Li), a beat cop partnered with Wilson for a case he’s ostensibly trying to solve, also represents at least a shred of good in his world. But Ellie can’t counteract the onslaught of bad. Not when underworld circumstances put Wilson at odds to Vincent. And definitely not when a Chinese gangster is killed during a cash drop involving a couple, Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) and Charlie (Justin Cornwell), who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Pretty soon everyone is separately chasing Mia and Charlie, and mostly for the wrong reasons. Like triad big boss Clarice Fong (Yeo Yann Yann), who seeks to avenge her son. Like Wilson, whose attempts to stop the escalating chain of violence usually result in – because this is a movie called Havoc – even more violence. And like Vincent and his crew of bent cops, who are only in it for themselves. Everyone in this sopping wet city, where it’s nearly always night, has made choices they tried to justify. But that justification only arrives by bullet.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? This, the Hardy Havoc, is not to be confused with that, the Hathaway Havoc (although that should also be seen, but for entirely different reasons). The world of the John Wick films seems to exist in parallel to Havoc Town, and Gareth Evans’ own work is a touchpoint, like the Raid films and Gangs of London, the ultraviolent crime drama he co-created. But Havoc also recalls the traditions of Hong Kong action movies, everything that happens in Léon: The Professional after Gary Oldman screams “Everrryyyoonnnne!!,” and the over-the-top bloodshed of Timo Tjahjanto’s The Night Comes for Us.
Performance Worth Watching: The havoc is havocing for basically everybody in Havoc, all of the time. But inside all of that chaos and bodies being blown apart, our pick to click is Quelin Sepulveda. Without much background or even lines with which to do this, Sepulveda quickly establishes Mia as resourceful, driven, and basically honest – even when a knot of triad henchmen are attacking her with meat cleavers.
Memorable Dialogue: The great big ≠ sign floating over Walker’s line to Mia – “I’m a cop but I’m not here to arrest you” – feels appropriate to Havoc in general, a film where the police serve and protect mostly themselves, bad guys beef with other bad guys, and big bosses regret the destruction they created…by creating more destruction.
Sex and Skin: You mean between all of the havoc? Who has the time?
Our Take: At first it was just with the cars, or rather cars beside the speeding hulk of a tractor trailer, as in the chase that takes up a chunk of Havoc early on. The vehicles seemed to move in a form of composed aggression that felt more like a video game than a film. Then the effect repeated with a commuter train. And then it began to drench the many, many gunfights in Havoc, to saturate them in feats of physical acrobatics further goosed by the fluid perspective of the camera, and its moves on the trajectory of a bullet from one havoc-bringer to another. It’s not Gareth Evans’ film going full video game. This isn’t like the Crank movies. It’s not an effect exaggerated for cynical laughs. But it does flatten the action of Havoc into a kind of pocket genre universe, a box canyon where there is no escape from terrible choices, not even with a full clip and the will to use it.
Even in a shoot-em-up genre context, this can be exhausting. At least a tiny bit of reality in this destructive imagined landscape would be welcome, because there is so little for any of the grim death and greedy motivations that populate the majority of Havoc to hang on. Tom Hardy does manage to build some soul into Wilson. It’s mostly in the after-image, of what used to be there before we met him. But it’s there. And Timothy Olyphant subverts his Raylan Givens lopsided grin into something twisted and murderous. But these are only glimpses, moments that pass between the majority, which is where everyone is trying to kill each other.
Our Call: STREAM IT – but bring your own umbrella and bulletproof vest. And don’t even think about smiling while watching this thing. That’s not allowed in rain-soaked Havoc Town, where bullets are currency and all of the choices are bad.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.