Havoc

When a Tom Hardy walks like an Eddie Brock, and Tom Hardy talks like an Eddie Brock, then when is Tom Hardy going to turn into Venom?

Maybe I was expecting too much coming into Havoc because I really enjoyed writer/director Gareth Evan’s other movie, The Raid. There were many things that I did like about Havoc, but as a whole the movie did not hold up.

The plot for Havoc is, at the same time, overstuffed and paper thin. It follows Walker (Tom Hardy) who is a jaded dirty cop during Christmas Eve. He gets pulled into a plotline about a group of masked men killing the son of a Triad leader. There’s a plotline about a group of people who happen to be at the wrong place and the wrong time. There’s also another plotline about corrupt cops. And there’s a truly tragic small subplot about a cop, his wife and a washing machine.

Havoc is a love letter to John Woo, but sans Woo’s Hong Kong brilliance. Also sans any characters that are as developed or memorable as those in Woo’s Hong Kong films – like Chow Yun Fat’s Tequila in Hard Boiled. This movie does do a good job at replicating the look and feel of those old Woo films though.

The opening car chase is so artificial with cars and trucks which have no weight and move in unnatural ways. Not a good way to start a film. It looked like an Unreal Engine demo. Though this may have been a stylistic choice to make the movie look like a video game as there is a sheen of artificialness through out the movie – like scenes taking place outside in the unnamed American city.

And since everything looks artificially, why not go all in? Outside of two reloads, the guns have endless clips.

All the violence has a corresponding squishy sound. Gunshots connect and there’s a wet squishy sound. Meat clever connects? Yup, wet squishy sound. Bloody and gore exiting a human body? Wet squishy sound. A lot of fruit must have given up their lives in a sound departments recording studio for this movie.

The club scene was absolutely fantastic action. The other long action scene with guns is less successful. It’s just a smattering of quick cuts and guns going blam blam and human bodies making squishy noises.

The Cantonese in the movie was odd. Some decent, a lot that is unintelligible. The subtitles are awfully wrong also.

I was not very entertained by Havoc. The action outside of the club scene was serviceable, but everything else around the action was overly convoluted and a bore.

Streamed on Netflix.