PLOT: On Christmas Eve, a dirty cop (Tom Hardy) is blackmailed by his crime lord boss (Forest Whitaker) into rescuing his son Charlie (Justin Cornwell), who’s been embroiled in a drug deal gone bad is the subject of a city-wide manhunt.
REVIEW: Havoc is the long-awaited return to action movies for director Gareth Evans. After a brief detour into hallucinogenic horror with Apostle and episodic TV with Gangs of London, Evans is back to shake up the genre, with Havoc ranking among the most brutal action films of the last decade. Sporting a body count that must be in the hundreds, with over 30,000 rounds of ammunition fired (a number I got right from the director himself), this is a totally different style of action film than the more polished efforts being put out by 87 Eleven/North (the folks behind John Wick, Nobody, and more).
While easily as violent as The Raid or its sequel, Havoc embraces a different style of action, with it being Evans’s homage to the heroic bloodshed genre. For those not in the know, this is the genre of action engineered by directors like John Woo and Ringo Lam during their 80s Hong Kong hey-day. Like in those films, the bullets fly constantly, with our heroes simply wincing anytime they take a bullet, as in this world it takes AT LEAST half a dozen wounds to take anyone down. Not since the days of Chow Yun-Fat and John Woo has there been as trigger happy an action flick, and it’s stunningly accomplished for fans of the genre.
Tom Hardy stars as a prototypical hero from this kind of movie, being the morally shady, semi-tragic hero who puts himself into harm’s way to do good. Rather than have him be a hitman or gangster with a conscience, Evans borrows from American cop movies, making him a crooked cop, who works with a crew of his fellow officers to rip off dealers at the behest of their crime lord boss with political ambitions (Whitaker – who seems to be having a ball as a quasi-redeemable villain). Of course, Hardy is tortured by his misdeeds, leaving him on the outs with the rest of his department, including his former best pal (played by a gun-toting Timothy Olyphant), with only a rookie partner (Jessie Mei Li) on his side, who doesn’t know the extent of his crimes.
Truth be told, there’s nothing especially original about Evans’s premise, with the whole plot being little more than an excuse to get to the movie’s true raison d’être – the incredible, extended action sequences. While it takes a while to get to them (nearly an hour), the second half of the movie is wall-to-wall carnage.
While we’ve seen Tom Hardy do action before, he’s never been put through the ringer like he has here. Shooting off round after round, and using edged weapons in extended fight sequences, he makes for a dynamic action hero. One thing worth noting is that his action is never polished, with him far more of a brawler than a guy like John Wick. He’s playing something of an everyman, so his fighting style is appropriately chaotic, with him using everything in reach to kill his opponents are quickly as he can. And, let me tell you – there are A LOT of opponents.
Now, some may find the film borders on being absurd, with perhaps hundreds of Chinese bad guys assaulting our heroic trio (consisting of Hardy, Cornwell, and his love interest – Quelin Sepulveda) in the second half of the movie. No one every really seems to run out of bullets either, but this is standard for the genre, and anyone walking into this should expect it to be highly stylized.
Technically, the movie is impeccable, with DP Matt Flannery giving it a grittier, harder-edged look than most other, more polished action flicks. The sound design is especially important, with each gun having a signature sound, while Evans’s regular composer Aria Prayogi contributes a propulsive score.
Of course, Havoc isn’t perfect, with the Chinese bad guys lacking development, with the main, female villain not given much in the way of screen time. The movie also has a liberal amount of cheesy scenes sprinkled in, with almost everything about the storyline being relatively cliche ridden. It doesn’t matter though. While some action fans may be frustrated by how long the carnage takes to kick in, once the gunfights start, the movie is a jaw-dropper, although it certainly would have played even better in theaters that it will at home.
Havoc begins streaming on Netflix on April 25th.
