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If you call a film Havoc, you’d better be prepared to deliver just that, not mere chaos or mayhem. Welsh director Gareth Evans provides the full bill of goods. Co-creator of TV’s Gangs of London, he made his international reputation as director of the thrillingly inventive Indonesian actioner The Raid (2011), and here he shows his prowess in an American cop thriller vein. Tom Hardy, looking as if he hasn’t unfurrowed his brow or had an hour’s sleep since last year’s The Bikeriders, plays a homicide detective in an unspecified US city. He gets caught in the crossfire — and crossfire there is aplenty — between a corrupt politician (Forest Whitaker), his own crooked colleagues (headed by Timothy Olyphant) and a Chinese Triad gang.
Evans and his team — including cinematographer Matt Flannery and “action designer” Jude Poyer — kick off with a frenetic highway chase involving police cars, a lorry and a consignment of washing machines, and never look back. A proud disciple of Hong Kong action maestro John Woo, Evans gives us bullet-ballet bloodbaths — slow-motion or lighting speed, he doesn’t mess with anything in between — plus the occasional flurry of martial arts. Along the way, he unreels an inventory of a million and one ways to kill, or maim, or reduce a log cabin to splinters.
Havoc is brutal, cynical, ultimately a little repetitive, but done with absolute expertise and brio — while the dark-city atmospherics (grit, graffiti, neon-lit sidewalk steam) are laid on with real elegance. There is also a small but significant role for the indispensable Luis Guzmán, the Ernest Borgnine of our day. As for Hardy (currently seen on the other side of the law in Paramount+ series MobLand), he was clearly made for better things than playing growling lunkhead juggernauts but, even so, few do it with more conviction.
★★★★☆
On Netflix from April 25
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