‘Havoc’ review: Gareth Evans pulls his punches

The writer/director of The Raid teams with Tom Hardy for Havoc, a Netflix original sorely missing the punch of Evans’ early work.

2011 was the start of a pivotal change in the action genre. That’s because The Raid: Redemption, a little Indonesian action thriller, rocked the scene and changed people’s perception of what martial arts movies could be in a new decade. It’s chock-full of brutal, visceral, unrelenting violence with some of the most intense stunts, choreography, and blood-squirting momentum seen in the genre. Writer/director Gareth Evans made a major calling card movie, only to follow it up with the even-more-impressive The Raid 2 a few years later. But then, things got disappointingly quiet.

While the director’s influence continued to be felt, particularly with other notable action movies like John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Monkey Man following its butt-kicking lead, Evans kept a disappointingly low profile in the years to follow. He eventually made his Raid 2 follow-up with a strong (if somewhat forgettable) horror-mystery period piece, Apostle, but Evans hasn’t directed a film since then. He certainly hasn’t contributed anything else to the action genre since the outstanding 2014 Raid sequel.

While his newest film wasn’t meant to be high-profile, it came with some hefty expectations. After all, as the writer-director’s first action movie in a decade, action lovers were quite eager for Evans to return to his element. So that’s why, while not necessarily a bad movie, it’s hard not to be let down by the Netflix original Havoc. Maybe hopes were too high for a procedural police picture? But one can’t help feel like, outside of a few notable sequences, this effort is a bit too mild — a word that I never thought I would use to describe a new action movie from the director of The Raid 2.

A bit of a wash.

The biggest detriment here, perhaps, is Evans’ script. It favors the sort of routine, boilerplate dirty cop story that any action fan has seen a thousand times. Patrick Walker (Tom Hardy) is a corrupt homicide detective with a heavy conscience. Walker’s beat is a fictional U.S. city that’s meant to be a collage of Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Pittsburgh, though it actually looks like something out of Sin City in its often 3D environment. Anywho, Walker is a man with waning morals in a dingy, deranged town, one where high-speed car chases involving an 18-wheeler and washing machines filled with cocaine (the sort of fun idea that is sprinkled into the narrative but never consistent enough to give Havoc a unique favor) are commonplace.

Joined by his new partner, the good-natured Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), Walker sleepwalks his way through yet another local shoot-’em-up. That is until the detective learns that one of the suspects is Charlie (Justin Cornwell), the son of Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), a mayoral candidate for whom Walker is often doing illegal transactions. Stressing that he’ll help as his final favor, Walker runs afoul of the Tsui crime family and its ruthless matriarch (Yeo Yann Yann), who will stop at nothing to avenge her departed son. What soon follows is a trail of blood, deceit, and misdeeds that will test all of Walker’s varied allegiances.

Hard kicks with Netflix.

A lot of this information comes in cliched monologues, dull bits of dialogue, and routine spouts of exposition That gives Havoc has a slow, plodding start, which is never what you want from an action movie, let alone one from the guy who made The Raid. It takes about 50 minutes for the plot to cool down and the action to get cooking, which is an ask even for a streaming title. Nevertheless, there’s no denying the big Netflix-ness of Havoc. With this digital sheen, lumpy pacing, over-and-under-explained storytelling, and just general procedural nature, Havoc plays more like TV than a proper movie in glaringly apparent ways.

Still, what you come for is the action. And how does that fare? While it takes its sweet time, give or take a chase scene or two in the first half, the action does deliver. Evans’ type of gritty, thunderous, hard-hitting violence really gives this movie a much-needed jolt. The remaining 45 minutes bring in so much no-holds-barred fun that it’s a wonder why it took so long to show up. It borrows rather heavily from John Woo (particularly Hard Boiled) but Evans also has the chops to make it count. So when the bullets finally shoot and the fists finally fly, Havoc pounds out thrills after thrills.

But is that enough to make it worthwhile? It’s easy to give Havoc the benefit of the doubt because it’s been too long since we’ve seen Evans in action mode, and there is an undeniable joy that comes from his unique brand of hard-hitting extremism brutality. But it also, sorely, is a bit “too little, too late,” not merely in terms of how it applies to Havoc, but in the general action sphere.

Keep things Hardy.

We’ve come a long way since 2011 — if not socially, nor politically, nor economically, then certainly in the action genre, at least. While Havoc knows how to provide some gritty, pulsating, invigorated bits of action and choreography, the set pieces are all a bit too familiar. Whether in confined environments with various appliances used to lethal extremes, or in neon-colored nightclubs that bathe our characters in as much fluorescent lights as blood, you know you’ve been in it before. When it comes to a plot as stock as this, the propulsive action can only count for so much. Havoc does have the goods when it counts, but that doesn’t bandage the other wounds in the movie.

With all that said, Evans is ultimately in good hands with Tom Hardy at the forefront. The actor-producer is among the most watchable of our times, if mainly because you know that he’ll make big choices that’ll keep your attention. Sometimes in your disbelief. For better or worse, Hardy plays it fairly straight for this one. He keeps to a normal (and thankfully audible) voice during his bits of familiar grumbling, and he’s good at holding his own in this sort of action vehicle. He carries himself in a manner that’s believable for the sort of high-throttle action sequences, but not with a rugged physique that’s completely unbelievable.

The verdict.

For a movie called Havoc, Evans generally (and somewhat disappointingly) keeps it familiar. At least, as far as his movies are concerned. Maybe that’s setting him up to fail, but coming back to a genre you redefined nearly 15 years ago with something like this, you can’t help but be a little underwhelmed when things are kept more pedestrian than catastrophic. It’s hard to know which way Evans will go next, but if he returns to action movies, hopefully his next one packs a bigger punch. The director has the goods. With Havoc, though, there’s too much damage control.

Havoc is now streaming exclusively on Netflix. Watch the trailer here

Images courtesy of Netflix. Read more article by Will Ashton here.