Havoc on Netflix: Gritty action can't save this overloaded crime thriller

Daily Maverick

16-05-2025

Gareth Evans, director of The Raid, teams up with Tom Hardy for this ultra-violent and relentlessly gory movie that should satisfy fans of Hong Kong-style action cinema, but will probably leave the rest of the audience beaten into submission.
Set in a particularly grimy yet artificial-looking American city, Havoc gathers crime thriller clichés to build a scaffold on which to hang its admittedly inventive action sequences.
Hardy plays homicide cop Walker, a once decent tough guy who has become disillusioned while carrying a terrible secret he would like to forget.
Like all world-weary cops, Walker is estranged from his wife and daughter, but sees a way to redeem himself when he becomes involved in a high-stakes conflict between an ice-cold crime boss, Little Sister (Yeo Yann Yann), out to avenge the murder of her son; petty thieves Charlie (Justin Cornwell) and Mia (Quelin Sepulveda), who Little Sister thinks are responsible for her son's death; and Walker's old squad members led by Vincent (Timothy Olyphant), who are also out to get Charlie and Mia for putting a colleague in the hospital while trying to escape the cops with a truck full of cocaine.
Walker is in the pay of corrupt mayoral candidate Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), who knows his dark secret. After recognising Charlie as Beaumont's son in CCTV footage, Walker sees a chance to get the politician off his back: he offers to find and save Charlie from all the murderous factions on his tail in exchange for Beaumont agreeing to stop blackmailing him.
As if that weren't enough to be getting on with, Walker is also saddled with a young, idealistic rookie cop, Ellie (Shadow and Bone's Jessie Mei Li), who in one of the film's few fresh twists, proves to be resourceful and more than capable of holding her own.
Hardy ably carries the drama and action on his shoulders, but his character's motivation for getting involved in this extremely dangerous mess aren't convincing.
Perhaps if Charlie had been Walker's son, it would have made sense for him to go to such extremes to save him, but the promise of escaping Beaumont's vaguely threatening hold doesn't seem enticing to someone as morally corrupt as Walker, who's already lost everyone he holds dear.
Whitaker wildly overacts as if he's in a Shakespearean tragedy, in contrast to Yeo, who knows just how much melodrama to inject into her emotionally devastated yet hard-as-nails gangster. Justified star Olyphant merely looks pained to be there, though younger actors Cornwell and Sepulveda fare better, making the audience believe in their desperation.
The slow build-up with only short bursts of violence do count in the movie's favour, creating some tension and preventing the action from reaching saturation point too soon.
Unfortunately Havoc then descends into a bloodbath that loses its impact, leaving the viewer exhausted instead of exhilarated.
Havoc is on Netflix now. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.