It’s been eight years since The Raid director Gareth Evans served as the man behind the camera on a feature film (that would be 2018’s goth horror Apostle) and five since he’s directed anything at all (the first five episodes of the blisteringly violent Brit-gangster series Gangs of London). Apparently, the cause for the long layover is that it has taken four years just to complete some additional shooting on his latest film, Havoc, which finally arrives on Netflix after having been filmed in 2021. The question, then, is if it’s a worthy return and time well spent for the guy who melted so many faces off with his gnarly Raid movies? Well, yes and no.
It’s Christmastime in some unnamed, broken-down industrial American City. After we watch a drug deal turned car chase go astoundingly wrong, we’re introduced to grizzled cop Walker (Tom Hardy, not doing too much of a funny voice this time), who’s already suspected of being dirty in one way or another due to his connections with shady politician/businessman Beaumont (Forest Whitaker). Even worse for him, he’s getting partnered up with rookie uniform Ellie (Jessie Mei Li) and being ordered to find Beaumont’s son Charlie (Justin Cromwell), who is on the run with his girlfriend Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) after running afoul of the local Triad gang. Oh, and there’s also a squad of corrupt cops led by Vincent (Timothy Olyphant) hunting down a cache of stolen dope.
So that’s a lot of setup and moving, familiar parts, but the cast of supporting characters runs even deeper. They’re frequently introduced with barely any detail or even a name, so you’d better get good at remembering faces before they get stabbed, shot, or blown up. And in keeping with Evans’ general approach, there’s a lot of plot in Havoc but not a lot of story, just an increasingly frantic series of paths crossing, often by coincidence, with precious little exposition to be found despite the first half of the movie operating largely as table-setting for the violence to come.
But what violence! Evans’ camera positively careens through a litany of bodily harm, often in digitally stitched together handheld one-ers. Gunfights, hand-to-hand combat, a laundry list of sharp objects — everything gets a moment in the sun in Havoc, and there’s a particular, effective emphasis on overkill. There are sure to be purists who will bristle at all the computer-assisted trickery involved in putting this all together, but where there’s this much glee taken in such nasty stuff and it’s served by such technically impressive execution, viewers would do well to just let the lizard brain take over — realism isn’t an option here anyway. In fact, in this sense, Havoc is actually served by featuring a narrative that is so often muddled; everything extraneous falls by the wayside, and viewers can simply sit back and enjoy Evans’ latest wild, brutal ride.
DIRECTOR: Gareth Evans; CAST: Tom Hardy, Timothy Olyphant, Forest Whitaker, Richard Harrington; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; STREAMING: April 25; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 45 min.
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