MOVIE REVIEW – Gareth Evans returns to directing after a seven-year hiatus with an unrelenting vengeance on April 25. In a snow-blanketed, decaying metropolis teeming with gangsters, crooked cops, and moral rot, Havoc delivers a relentless storm of bone-shattering violence and visual bravado. Even in a genre defined by excess, this film goes gloriously overboard, offering the kind of chaotic brutality action fans dream about.

Set during a bleak Christmas season, the film opens with detective Walker (Tom Hardy) reflecting on choices and consequences, while flashes of a botched drug-related crime from 18 months earlier play out. There’s a corpse, a barrel, a river—and a soul weighed down by guilt.

Walker is a wrecked, flannel-wrapped homicide detective who looks like he hasn’t slept in years and acts like he’s allergic to compromise. He’s also a catastrophically bad dad, grabbing a handful of gas station toys for his daughter on Christmas Eve—so pitiful even the cashier gives him a hard time.

Hardy gives Walker a bruised soul buried under layers of stoicism and fury, in stark contrast to the rest of Havoc’s rogues, who seem perfectly at peace with their own corruption. But character study takes a backseat as the film launches headfirst into a turbo-charged chase through grimy alleys and desolate highways, with police tailing a semi truck loaded with masked criminals.

Metal, Concrete, and Mayhem

Evans’ camera hurtles through the chaos with ferocity, whipping around corners and through wreckage like it’s part of the pursuit. The mayhem peaks when the fleeing truck ejects a washing machine through a patrol car’s windshield, nearly killing the driver and halting the squad led by Vincent (Timothy Olyphant).

Charlie (Justin Cornwell) and Mia (Quelin Sepulveda), leaders of the crew, regroup with Triad boss Tsui (Jeremy Ang Jones), who hired them to steal a massive shipment of cocaine. But their meeting turns into a bloodbath when armed men in demonic masks storm in, slaughter everyone, and vanish with the drugs.

Blood Debts and Broken Families

Charlie and Mia barely escape, but security footage makes them the prime suspects. Now hunted, they face the wrath of Tsui’s mother Clarice Fong (Yeo Yann Yann), a fearsome matriarch who flies in from abroad to avenge her son. Also panicking is mayoral hopeful Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), Charlie’s estranged father, who knows a scandal like this could nuke his campaign.

Walker, who recently helped Lawrence dodge a legal bullet, agrees to find Charlie before Clarice’s killers do. But this job is complicated by Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), a straight-arrow new partner who’s allergic to Walker’s brand of justice. No matter—Walker is a human battering ram who’ll jam a finger into a bullet wound for answers, and track Mia through her uncle (Luis Guzmán), a scrapyard operator forging passports for a quick getaway.

Hardy’s Walker is magnetic in his menace—abrasive, relentless, and totally unwilling to explain himself. He doesn’t play by the rules. He crushes them underfoot.

Welcome to the Slaughterhouse

When Clarice ambushes Lawrence in traffic and kidnaps him, Havoc dives headfirst into madness. Everyone descends on a nightclub to find Mia, and what follows is a carnage-drenched symphony of headshots, stabbings, and meat cleavers. It makes John Wick look like a restrained art film.

Evans has a rare talent: even as the screen explodes with violence, you always know where you are. The final showdown in a remote cabin sees Walker, Charlie, Mia, and a small army of thugs beat, shoot, and smash their way through an unholy brawl. Hardy anchors every frame, taking down enemies with guns, poles, spearguns—or just brute force through a wooden floor.

Havoc is merciless, nihilistic, and soaked in blood. For those seeking cinematic salvation through suffering, this is gospel.

Final Shots and Shaky Morals

The one real letdown is Evans sidelining Olyphant, who gets barely a sliver of screen time and no standout moments. But the film compensates with shattered limbs and glass-sprayed slow-motion set pieces that are as beautiful as they are gruesome.

The pièce de résistance? A jaw-dropping continuous shot that glides from inside a subway car to the street and then into a nightclub basement. Even if you spot the digital stitching, the ambition is stunning. Havoc proves once again that when it comes to orchestrating elegant ultraviolence, Gareth Evans stands nearly alone.

The ending stumbles slightly as it tries to restore moral order, punishing some villains and absolving others without clear logic. But it’s still a glorious descent into hell, reminding us that redemption, however fleeting, might just lie at the end of a bloody trail of destruction.

– Gergely Herpai “BadSector” –