Gareth Evans’ long delayed take on Heroic Bloodshed – Havoc finally hit Netflix last week. After being announced early in 2021 the film was postponed, thanks to not only reshoots (I’ve got a theory on that later!), but actor’s strike and his A-List star’s busy schedule — who delivers something a bit unexpected here. It might be the cause for the film’s rather divisive reception, as Hardy is not the expected reluctant hero or even a charming anti-hero. Havoc is about as grimy as an action film comes, this is visible thanks to not only the characters morality, but the film’s grainy visuals, and the dirty snow clinging to everything in sight. Transpiring during the days leading up to and after Christmas, the film has something to say about the lengths families will go to take care of their own during this tense season.
Tom Hardy plays Patrick Walker, a broken down, dirty cop, and not the cool kind either. He’s estranged from his family and firmly in the pocket of crooked mayoral candidate Lawrence Beaumon (Forest Whitaker), who’s about to take the unnamed Gothan-like city. When Beaumon’s son Charlie (Justin Cornwell) is thought to be behind the death of local Triad boss, Tsui (Jeremy Ang Jones) due to a heist gone terribly wrong, Patrick is charged by his father to find Charlie before Tsui’s mother known here simply as “Mother” and her team of assassins do. Patrick, who is already too far down this road of corruption knows he’s a dead man either way, but thanks to the holiday season is willing to put his life on the line for one last time for the possibility of proving to his wife there is something of the righteous man she married left.
Of course given Gareth Evans’ reputation the action in this film is just dialed up to 11, in set pieces that are complex as they are brutal. 45s are traded in for automatic assault weapons with endless clips that shred through human bodies of both the guilty and the innocent. It’s not not violence for violence’s sake, but Gareth using hyperviolence to show how fragile life is and how this blind emotional violence affects everyone around it. It’s not pretty, but that’s the point. The clear breakout in Havoc is Mother’s right hand – Michelle Waterson who plays a nameless shorthaired assassin who always seems to get the best of Hardy for better or worse. For what she lacks in dialog, she more than makes up for with the anxiety she induces whenever she appears on screen.
Like Fury Road, Hardy’s character is neither the incitier of this narrative, a point of connection for the audience or sympathetic for that matter, and I think that’s where this film loses so many people. He is just a man, who because he doesn’t fear death, ultimately embodies it. The closest thing we get to a protagonist is Ellie (Jessie Mei Li) Patrick’s rookie Homicide partner who is thrust head first into this corrupt world, and who is not sure who she should trust. That being the case, peppered throughout the film are these moments of raw human connection between these heavys who all believe they are all trying to do the right thing by their family. This all comes into focus in a conversation between Mother and Lawrence, when they both talk about how they’ve both somehow failed their children and how this crusade for both parties is a chance at not letting their children down one last time…
Given the bleak nature of the film, I would wager to bet the reshoots were flashbacks that hope to offer some explanation as to how Patrick lost his soul, but that’s not important here. The important part is, how far these people who have all failed their children by putting them on a course far more dangerous than their own, are willing to go for that chance at their own redemption – whether it be a corrupt cop, a corrupt mayor or a Triad boss. But like the gritty world of Havoc, it doesn’t end well for any of those involved and it manages to do so while delivering an action set piece in a cabin that will make any hard-core action fan’s head spin. Gareth Evans’ ability to seamlessly combine that emotionality with that high level of violent action, is what makes Havoc a film that will no doubt prove there are few in action with these kinds of chops. Havoc is a visceral, powder keg of a film whose emotional gut punches hit as hard as its action.
