'Havoc' review: Tom Hardy wreaks you know exactly what

Netflix

In the next episode of 'Law & Disorder', Tom Hardy will wreak an ungodly amount of havoc. And in case you're still in the dark somehow, today we're talking about Havoc, which is a new action thriller written and directed by Gareth Evans. Hardy's character Walker is a hard-boiled, American-accented detective in an unnamed city, which itself might be stuck inside a video game. He is called into action after a group of thieves driving a freight truck filled with drugs end up injuring cops that are chasing them. This leads Walker, who teams up with young police officer Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), towards a larger conspiracy that involves crooked mayoral candidate Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), his son and one of the thieves Charlie (Justin Cornwell), Charlie's partner Mia (Quelin Sepulveda), triad leader "Mother" (Yeo Yann Yann) who's seeking revenge, as well as equally vengeful narcotics cop Vincent (Timothy Olyphant).

The mention of a video game world above is not a mistake as the film opens with visuals akin to 'Grand Theft Auto' and similar games featuring crime and vehicles. It can be a bit jarring especially if you expect a lot of practical work based on Evans' previous work, but luckily it mostly serves as a hyper-stylised opening sequence that pretty much exists to please the modern streaming algorithm that requires these kinds of things so viewers won't close their app immediately.

From there on, we follow Walker navigating the more human-focused drama and the tension builds up to the bone-breaking, skull-crushing action showcases that we all signed up for in the first place. On that front, Havoc definitely delivers as the stunt choreography (Jude Poyer acting as the designer and coordinator) and how everything plays out is often breathtaking, from falls to body slams, and how blood splatter and broken glass are used to accentuate the carnage. Matt Flannery's cinematography follows the stunt performances smoothly as well. There are two main events in the movie in terms of action and both do eventually fixate on more video game-esque gunplay than you'd want—at least personally but I'd assume most people watching this expect more, too—but the overall package is still enough to make Havoc not as mind-numbing as it could've been.

Looking at the big picture, though, the movie is quite far from its true potential and that dilemma is caused by the fact that the story is subpar, even poor at times, when you need it to be at least adequate in order to rise above a certain threshold. The half-assed developments go hand in hand with our toothless, one-note characters who don't inspire much investment from us, the viewers; their conflicts and exchanges of dialogue merely function as a reason for one of them to shoot another and as a result, you don't really care about their fates. Yeo brings stoic menace to the proceedings with her performance as someone who doesn't mess about, but elsewhere, actors like Hardy, Li and Whitaker never manage to turn their characters into believable people as they're regularly undercut by Evans' writing. In this genre, our expectations are lower than usual if everything else works, but what's on the page here keeps underdelivering.

It's also interesting that Havoc clearly wants to be one of those lowkey holiday movies as it (sort of) has a Christmas setting and subplot, in addition to significant uses of a red and green colour palette, but it's coming out in spring. Haphazard is the word that mostly comes to mind when you put all these things together and try to make sense of what happened here. It's not exactly a downer because of the great action set pieces, but a letdown is a fair description.

Smileys: Stunt choreography

Frowneys: Story, characterisation

Those cops are washed-up.

2.5/5

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