‘Havoc’ Review: Tom Hardy Dials the Ultra-Violence and the Body Count Way Up in Netflix’s High-Octane Action Thriller

If you are triggered by the sound of gunfire, be warned that the unrelenting hail of bullets in the new Netflix action thriller Havoc might rattle you. But for anyone with a taste for operatic violence and fountains of blood as shotgun and assault rifle blasts send bodies flying in slo-mo or dancing like convulsive marionettes, Gareth Evans’ gritty neo-noir will be just the ticket. That goes double for fans of the Welsh writer-director’s dizzying Indonesian martial arts beatdowns, The Raid and its sequel.

From Bronson to Inception, The Dark Knight Rises through Mad Max: Fury Road, Tom Hardy is no stranger to explosive violence, both graphic and stylized. He gets ample opportunity to draw on that experience as soul-sick homicide detective Walker, whether he’s using a weapon or his fists, a metal pipe or what appears to be a big game fishing hook.

Related Stories

TV

Critics' Conversation: A Gloomy Small-Screen Spring

Movies

Charlize Theron and Team of Immortals Face New Threat in Netflix's 'The Old Guard 2' Trailer

A brooding cop jaded to the core, navigating the Chinatown underworld of an unnamed American metropolis besieged by drugs and crime, the role is very much in Hardy’s sweet spot. His natural gravitas and imposing physicality add dimension to the taciturn character, who comes from a long movie line of burnt-out law enforcement officers, embittered by the job, sullied by corruption and ditched by their spouses.

Aside from Evans’ 2018 detour into gothic folk horror, Apostle (another Netflix original), plotting, dialogue and character have generally been secondary to punishing action in the director’s movies. The characters here are mostly familiar types — maybe even stereotypes — and not every narrative detail is satisfyingly elucidated. But as a vehicle to string together hard-charging set pieces, it gets the job done.

An opening voiceover from Walker reflects on making choices that you try to justify for yourself and your family — for a while, it works, until it doesn’t when you make a choice that can neither be justified nor forgiven. The choice that haunts Walker was made impetuously during a drug bust that didn’t go as planned. “It takes everything,” he says. “Your family. Your friends. Yourself. And then you’re left with nothing but ghosts.”

The movie leaps straight into an accelerated chase, with cop cars in pursuit of a stolen truck full of washing machines, speeding through the city and out onto the freeway. One way to stop a police vehicle closing in, it turns out, is to hurl a washing machine at it. That stunt puts Walker’s friend and former narcotics colleague Cortez (Serhat Metin) in the ICU. His relationship with the rest of the narcotics crew, now led by shifty Vincent (Timothy Olyphant), is far from cordial.

The truck was stolen by Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) and her boyfriend Charlie (Justin Cornwell), who happens to be the estranged son of Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), a real estate mogul running for mayor on a campaign to clean up crime. The washers contain a large haul of cocaine, which Mia and Charlie are tasked with delivering to the Chinatown hangout of smug young local Triad boss Tsui Fong (Jeremy Ang Jones) to square up a debt.

They barely make it out as three heavily armored thugs wearing hockey masks descend on the place with assault rifles blazing, mowing down everyone except Fong’s lieutenant, Ching (Sunny Pang), who gets an all-caps text warning that reads: “WALK AWAY NOW.” In a nifty structural twist, we witness the carnage only through Walker piecing it together when he arrives to investigate with Ellie (Jesse Mei Li), the new partner with whom he’s been reluctantly paired.

After spotting Charlie on the blurred edge of a CCTV frame, Walker warns Lawrence that his son will likely be a target for gangster retaliation. The detective has shadowy connections to the mayoral candidate. But having somehow persuaded the D.A. to drop an investigation into Beaumont, Walker says their dealings are over. Lawrence, however, has leverage over the cop, and wants to repair his relationship with Charlie.

The threat to Charlie and especially Mia escalates with the arrival from Hong Kong of Fong’s mother Clarice, a steely crime matriarch played by an almost unrecognizable Yeo Yann Yann, so memorable in Anthony Chen’s gorgeous domestic drama, Ilo Ilo. She also brings her own hit squad, led by a nameless Assassin with deadly fists and feet. That whoop-ass machine is played with a fierce scowl by MMA fighter Michelle Waterson.

While we have seen versions of these characters before, sharp casting that includes some relatively new faces gives them vitality. Li is particularly compelling as Ellie, the partner treated like a liability by Walker until he’s kicked off the case. She proves far tougher and more resourceful than he gave her credit for, gaining his trust while putting her own career at risk. Like Waterson, Pang has a martial arts background, though he mostly remains outside the melee as ambitious operator Ching, cozying up to “Big Sister” Clarice while double-dealing with corrupt cops.

Among the bigger names, Whitaker is amusing balancing the public respectability of political ambition with the arrogant unscrupulousness of a shameless white-collar crook. Olyphant, despite somewhat limited screen time, ably drops hints about Vincent’s elastic professional ethics before his more unequivocal role in the big finale. And Luis Guzmán makes a welcome appearance as Mia’s wily Uncle Raul, whose scrapyard is a front for criminal sidelines.

The virtuoso sequence that will generate giddy excitement among enthusiasts of Evans’ earlier films is an extended bout of killing and maiming in a nightclub where techno music keeps thumping as bodies keep dropping. The various factions all converge as Walker negotiates a rendezvous with the extremely wary Mia, which is interrupted by dirty cops, followed by wave upon wave of gun- and blade-wielding Chinese gangsters. It’s like The Raid meets John Wick, stunning in its unstoppable energy and complex fight and stunt choreography.

Set pieces like that one — amped up by Aria Prayogi’s propulsively moody score, which at times dips effectively into cool Carpenter-esque synth dread — are the movie’s meat and potatoes, much more so than its plot mechanics.

Few filmmakers can compare with the muscularity Evans brings to the frenzied mass-casualty clash. The director has acknowledged inspirations here ranging from John Boorman’s Point Blank (in which Lee Marvin also played a character named Walker) to John Woo’s Hong Kong action thrillers of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, like The Killer and Hard Boiled.

There’s vicious fun watching the Assassin and her posse of hitmen on motorcycles ambush Beaumont’s town car, stuck in traffic — to the unlikely accompaniment of Bing Crosby singing “O Holy Night.” And the final showdown is a banger, also allowing Cornwell and Sepulveda to come into their own when Walker takes Mia and Charlie to hide out at the rustic lakeside fishing cabin his father left him. It plays like an epic siege condensed into one act, with an onslaught of guns followed by some slice-and-dice, then finally by hand-to-hand mayhem.

With Hardy in fine form at the wheel, Havoc knows what its audience wants. It also looks great, with regular Evans DP Matt Flannery’s dynamic cameras zipping in and out of the bloody fray and textured visuals slashed with throbbing colors. The setting is a city so grim and seedy it seems to exist only at night. The fact that the environments were mostly constructed at a studio in Cardiff suggests there’s lots of ace craftspeople hiding out in Wales.

If you’re looking for blood and viscera and creative hyper-violence to fuel your adrenaline rush, the movie delivers.