Tom Hardy is going through a hot streak right now. With MobLand making waves and a Season 2 assured, his collaboration with Gareth Evans, writer-director of The Raid and its impressive sequel feels fortuitous. What Havoc brings to the table is a martial arts tech-noir smackdown, featuring Hardy alongside Forest Whittaker and Timothy Olyphant. However, rather than relying on a stacked ensemble cast, Havoc delivers a textbook corruption thriller that leans into superior set pieces, exceptional fight choreography, and an anti-hero with action chops to spare.
Fans of the Raid films will relish some of the most audacious action sequences ever staged, while Hardy fashions a gruff powerhouse performance from the bones of Walker. In the shorthand that passes for a screenplay, audiences get broad strokes of characterisation that deliver the bare bones of a plot. Walker is an absentee father wrapped up in his police work, who gets pressganged into tracking down a politician’s son. This is copybook stuff that Hardy can do in his sleep and serves as a warm-up to the bloodletting which follows.
For anyone after emotional depth there are occasional flashes, but these never last long. Inventive kill shots, split second timing, and balletic takedowns are where Havoc excels. Dynamic cinematography combines with seamless visual effects to completely immerse audiences. Drawing attention away from Forest Whittaker on autopilot, phoning in a political heavyweight performance in Laurence Beaumont.
Image Courtesy of Netflix
Like Powers Boothe in Sin City and Kingpin circa 2008, Beaumont exudes omnipotence. Audiences might not feel as invested as they might like, but Havoc was never going to be an Oscar-winning role for the actor. Beaumont is a stylish plot device, there to give Walker an excuse to crack heads. There is something brazen about the way Gareth Evans embraces this in his writing with such confidence, making audiences able to forgive dramatic flaws elsewhere.
Real fans of this genre will turn a blind eye as Hardy unleashes hell, and those body counts increase. They will appreciate the production design that tips a hat to Kathyrn Bigelow’s Strange Days and admire a cityscape that stylistically reflects Blade Runner. Havoc might not attain the iconic status of those landmark movies, but this film still delivers a distinctive Netflix debut from Gareth Evans. Laying the groundwork for a director who requires no introduction for those movie goers in the know.
However, some actors are short-changed when it comes to screen time, robbing them of an identity as they struggle to become more than two-dimensional. Timothy Olyphant is the biggest casualty when it comes to this playing Vincent. A stereotypical villain that blocks Walker from achieving his objective. Both cunning and calculating, but ultimately ineffective, Olyphant has made more of an impression elsewhere. This is why Havoc exists somewhere between a mainstream martial arts fest, and B-movie mediocrity. Appeasing Tom Hardy fans worldwide as Gareth Evans lets him off the leash to wreak Havoc, literally.
Havoc is out on Netflix now.