Havoc review: Netflix’s most violent thriller ever? Quite possibly

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The Raid director Gareth Evans returns to Netflix with Tom Hardy in tow for the ultra-violent action thriller, Havoc. Our review:

Were you lucky enough to see The Raid in a busy cinema when it came out in 2011? If so, you may have found yourself caught up in a visceral kind of audience participation. Director Gareth Evans’ breakthrough action thriller seemed designed to provoke gasps of shock at its brutal, intimate combat and bloodletting. Havoc, his first film since 2018’s Apostle, is closer to The Raid than that foray into folk horror, albeit with bullet-strewn action more obviously modelled on such heroic bloodshed staples as The Killer, Hard Boiled and City On Fire.

Set in a wintry American metropolis that feels like the backdrop for a Frank Miller comic, Havoc is a noirish thriller about corrupt cops, Chinese gangsters and street level hoodlums all drawn into a violent web of bloody revenge. Tom Hardy plays Walker, a craggy detective with a chequered past. Investigating the aftermath of a shootout at a club, he’s drawn into a wider confrontation that takes in an even more dodgy fellow cop, played by a charismatically lizard-like Timothy Olyphant, and the local mayor (Forest Whitaker) whose 20-something son (Justin Cornwell) has gone missing following the shootout. Walker’s tasked with tracking the son down, but soon discovers the wayward youth has also been targeted by a Triad boss (Yeo Yann Yann) who wants him dead.

Writing as well as directing, Evans draws deep from a big book of thriller cliches, and there’s little here that hasn’t been seen in American cop movies of the 1970s or Hong Kong gangster flicks of the 1980s and 1990s. For the first few minutes, as Hardy trudges and mumbles his way through Evans’ hellish city – Cardiff locations stand in for an unnamed East Coast US metropolis – you might even wonder why the filmmaker wanted to tell this particular story at all. Gradually, however, as his characters are moved into position like pieces on a chess board, the tension ratchets up – all building to a colour-drenched, vicious mid-point action sequence in a club where Havoc explodes frenziedly into life.

From there, Havoc hurtles along with wild-eyed fury, abruptly closing off what might have been longer plot strands in regular movies of this ilk and ploughing onto the next set-piece. Hardy, often a quiet, interior sort of leading man, threatens to get lost in all the noise on occasions, but then, as good as the cast is – Luis Guzman, Richard Harrington and Michelle Waterson are among the support – the star of the piece is Evans’ own technical skill as an orchestrator of muzzle flashes and gore.

In a way, Havoc is a kind of macho Saltburn: it makes jabs at deeper themes – Forest Whitaker and Yeo Yann Yann talk about parenthood at one stage; Hardy’s estranged from his daughter – but really, the gritty surface is the point of its existence. And while there are times when his hyper-stylised approach gets a little too much – in the blur of movement, it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of who’s shooting at who – the sheer blunt-force impact of Evans’ style is undeniable.

What distinguishes Evans’ taste in action from, say, John Wick directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, is his genetic splicing of Hong Kong action with grindhouse horror. More gun-heavy and 80s John Woo-influenced than The Raid, Havoc’s depiction of bullet wounds and death is more akin to early Sam Raimi. One set-piece in particular feels like a hyper-violent homage to Raimi’s The Evil Dead or John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13.

Is this the most violent film Netflix has ever commissioned? In action rather than pure horror terms, quite possibly. One shootout in particular is absolutely unhinged, with harpoons and hooks in faces and multiple shotgun blasts to a single torso. Given how vanilla most of Netflix’s action thriller output is, this is thrillingly antisocial. Like a ghetto blaster played too loud on a beach, there’s something almost punk rock about a film this messy going out on Netflix’s algorithm-precise platform.

In terms of character and plot, Havoc is less meaty than the action, but unlike the operatic expanse of gangland saga The Raid 2, Evans’ latest film keeps to a concise 100 minutes or so. All of which turns Havoc into the streaming era equivalent of a midnight movie – the kind of experience that, like The Raid before it, is best enjoyed with a crowd of similarly appreciative viewers who can add their own gasps and yelps of surprise to the soundtrack.

It’s ironic, then, that Havoc was made for Netflix, meaning more people will likely see the film in their living rooms – or worse, on a mobile device – rather than as a collective experience. Our advice: turn the lights down, crank the volume up, and invite some friends around for a delightfully outrageous evening’s entertainment.

Havoc streams on Netflix from the 25th April.