‘Havoc’ Review – A Movie That Lives Up To Its Title, If Not Its Director’s Reputation

Gareth Evans is a bona fide legend already, since the guy who made The Raid: Redemption deserves to live in eternal infamy as an action movie icon (he was also responsible for all the best stuff in the first season of Gangs of London). But he seems to be making progressively worse movies. I’m one of the few who thought that The Raid 2: Berandal was a step down, partly because it was too long and too plotty, and Apostle was like that too. Evans’s latest Netflix effort, Havoc, mistakes upping the body count with upping the quality, and all the same problems seem to be persisting.

The genius of The Raid was that after establishing the basic premise it was just one long action sequence. It also stripped that movie’s hero, indestructible Indonesian cop Rama, of a gun pretty early on, since hand-to-hand combat is infinitely more entertaining than messy shootouts. Some people would complain about this, lamenting the lack of character development and thematic resonance, but trust me, the action in that movie is art. There’s nothing wrong with a director playing to his strengths. The efforts to expand that core concept into a sprawling gang epic in The Raid 2, into a horror movie in Apostle, and into a Training Day-style corrupt cop drama here in Havoc, all seem to backfire. You’re just left waiting for the next set-piece, wondering why such a simplistic plot is so difficult to keep track of.

The reason is obvious when you think about it – Evans isn’t that good with anything other than action. Again, this isn’t a criticism so much as an observation. But check this plot out. In a fictional city that looks like Gotham City by way of Frank Miller’s Sin City, Tom Hardy plays a corrupt cop named Walker who works as a fixer for the city’s businessman-turned-mayor Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker). He was previously associated with a gang of corrupt officers including slimy bad guy Vincent (Timothy Olyphant), but a job went a bit too far, so now he’s trying (and failing) to be a good dad and get on the straight and narrow. An opportunity presents itself when Lawrence’s son, Charlie (Justin Cornwell), is implicated along with his girlfriend Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) in the murder of a Triad-style crime syndicate. If Walker gets to Charlie before anyone else does, he’s off the hook.

This sounds pretty simple, but it’s told in the most hectic way possible. Walker starts out investigating the case with his idealistic new partner, Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), but quickly goes rogue to work his own leads. He frequently has eerie flashbacks and very expository conversations with people he encounters so that we have enough information to piece together what’s happening, but it all descends into complete chaos with the arrival of Mother (Yeo Yann Yann), the creatively-named mother of the murdered Triad boss Tsui (Jeremy Ang Jones), and her coterie of enforcers, including the equally creatively named Assassin (former UFC fighter Michelle Waterson, aka “The Karate Hottie”).

Tom Hardy in Havoc | Image via Netflix

You can tell Evans has written this, is all I’m saying. As in most of his movies the plot isn’t really the point, more of an excuse for preposterous action set-pieces of startling brutality and scale, but there’s still a lot of Havoc that proceeds as if we understand or care about things that, in reality, we simply do not. This is not a movie in which it matters whether or not Walker gets a Christmas present to his daughter. Oh, Havoc is also a Christmas movie, for what that’s worth, though one suspects very little.

Here’s what you need to know – there are three set-pieces in this movie that are absolutely dynamite. It’s a thoroughly mediocre experience overall that occasionally morphs without warning into the most exciting and creatively staged movie of the year. There’s a phenomenal chase sequence, a nightclub fight that rivals the one in John Wick, and a balls-to-the-wall climactic shootout at Walker’s snowy fishing cabin that is almost uniquely demented. Many, many people die in explosions of cheap-looking CGI gore, and every time you think it might be over it just keeps going. The trouble is you won’t care about anything that’s happening in it, or anyone it’s happening to, beyond the facile thrills of the sheer craftsmanship and gonzo sadism on display.

This is a shame, though not unexpected for Evans connoisseurs. But I miss the halcyon days where his movies didn’t need big-name actors to be wasted on cardboard characters, or artificial filters to try and look “arty”, or needless storytelling flourishes to convince us that anything but the action was the point. As I said at the top, the action is the art. The narrative and aesthetic minimalism of The Raid was the best thing about it, and that, sadly, seems to be what Evans is losing as he is churned through the cogs of the Netflix algorithm. Maybe it’s time for The Raid 3: Back to Basics.