Havoc is that it has a lot of good moments, but doesn't have either the narrative simplicity or cohesive world-building to make it really work
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Filmmaker Gareth Evans is hard to pin down. After his trio of collaborations with Iko Uwais and other Indonesian martial arts royalty (Merantu, The Raid and The Raid 2) Evans applied his grindhouse sensibilities to a period horror film called Apostle, a gangster show called Gangs of London and now he's back on the action thriller bandwagon with Havoc. So is Havoc a return to Evans' roots or more indulgent than impactful?
The Setup
Tom Hardy plays Patrick Walker, a gruff homicide cop that's trying to move on from his corrupt past. And he just might have his opportunity, because a local politician's son has just been implicated in a gangland attack, and consequently made himself a target for the a gaggle of Triad gangsters and corrupt cops. Now it's up to Walker to keep the young man alive long enough to get out of town.
I'll start up top by saying that I enjoyed Havoc. I don't agree with a number of the creative choices being made and have a gaggle of notes about the script, but in terms of lean, nasty action movie thrills, Evans still has it. His sense for action choreography is still solid and his horror movie tendency to deliver buckets upon buckets of blood death is completely intact.
Honestly there hasn't been a semi-mainstream movie that's blended action with such bloody payoffs since Punisher: War Zone. Because as brutal as individual moments and kills are in John Wick movies, they lack that excess factor that makes War Zone an underrated gem (that's also entirely in line with the character).
So why am I not as big on this movie as I was on Evans' previous films? There's a few reasons that stand out.
Camera Work
One of the things that made The Raid look and feel different than martial arts movies of the past was the camera work. The appeal of a lot of traditional martial arts movies is that they'll go into a wide shot and just let the choreography shine. And if they zoom in or pan down it would be the follow a sequence (i.e. footwork/grappling). Whereas The Raid zooms in, cuts, an even follows individual blows depending on the scene. One that immediately stands out is in one of the hallway fights where Iko Uwais slams a man's head into multiple sections of a tile wall and the camera zooms in on the guys face so we can see/feel the impact of each face slam.
So while there was plenty of editing and camera movement, everything felt easy to follow and fluid. In Havoc Evans has opted for mostly handheld camera work and it is...not my favorite. Much like fellow shaky cam enthusiast Paul Greengrass, Evans' editing and camera work isn't so rapid that you can't follow what's happening. But it is often jarring and requires constant visual readjustment in the more chaotic action beats. There's so many times I wanted a static shot or a steadicam just so we could see all of the gonzo choreography from start to finish.
Oddly enough this gets better when the movie goes into its chaotic firefights, because Evans decided to invoke his Peckinpah and John Woo enthusiasm to feature slow motion payoffs for kills. And then once we're back into hand to hand combat, everything's shaky again. I get that it's a stylistic choice, but I mostly found it distracting versus immersive.
What is This World?
It's clear to me that Evans has an affection for sprawling gangster pictures like Infernal Affairs/The Departed or The Godfather where we've got multiple factions with dueling loyalties jockeying with each other for money, power or position. Seems to be the entire premise of his Gangs of London show and it's very present in The Raid 2 as well.
Havoc has similar aspirations since we're looking at Triads, local politicians and corrupt cops all trying to get over or one up each other. The problem is trying to put all of those complications into a single hour forty-five minute movie means everything feels very very rushed. Timothy Olyphant's character and Tom Hardy's Walker clearly have a past together, but all we get is one flashback scene with the two of them. We have multiple reflections on parent/child relationships that all get about a sentence or two of backstory before fading into the background.
You might also notice that I haven't named a city because...it's never named as far as I can tell.
So as much as the movie is designed to be this violent intersection between rival factions and groups, it's really hard to piece together everyone's motivations or even why they might behave the way they do. There's just not enough information or exposition there, which is how you end up with a city without a name.
This is also where the omnipresence of digital/CGI created worlds really stands out and invites a lot of unfavorable video game comparisons. While I understand that maybe the film couldn't shoot on location or do as much intense stunt work as Evans did with his game for anything crew in The Raid, doing things practically grounds your world a bit. So when you have scenes where the only tactile/real thing are the actors and even the muzzle flare looks like a video game effect, and you're not even sure what city you're supposed to be in, it can get distracting.
Moments vs. A Movie
The main issue with Havoc is that it has a lot of good moments, but doesn't have either the narrative simplicity or cohesive world-building to make it really work, regardless of how you feel about the digital filmmaking aspects or its chaotic action.
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