HAVOC Review: Gareth Edwards' Take on Heroic Bloodshed Reaps Bloody Rewards

Tom Hardy is Walker, a bent detective in a nondescript American city, fighting his way through the criminal underworld. Walker is turning his city inside out, searching for the son of a corrupt politician with whom he has had past dealings. After a drug deal goes wrong and the son of a Triad boss is murdered, the streets light up with gunfire, and Walker finds himself the target of not only the Triad but some of his fellow cops. Facing the demons of his past, Walker and his new partner Ellie race to find the politician’s son before anyone else does. 

 

The other week, we saw a post on one of Gareth Edwards' socials, while they were doing their due diligence on the press junket. They wrote that they said or were preparing to say that their latest film, Havoc, is a love letter to the heroic bloodshed films from the golden age of Hong Kong action cinema. He was preparing to say that over, and over, and over, and over again, to every person in that junket they were going to speak to that day.

 

All it took was a moment for us to watch that full trailer to see they meant it. It just took ten seconds, but once we saw those Chinese gang members twisting (and shouting, twist and shout!) to the bullet hits, it brought me back to those weekend afternoons watching those classic Hong Kong action movies like the gold standards, John Woo’s trilogy: Hard Boiled, The Killer, and A Better Tomorrow. But more than just aesthetic, themes of honor, betrayal, and personal sacrifice also wind their way through Evans’ screenplay. If you are a fan of that era of film (and why aren’t you?), you’re really going to dig this. 

 

Havoc takes place around Christmas, because we all know the best action movies take place around the holidays. The design team did a good job of dressing up the shooting location, Cardiff, Wales, as a nondescript American city in the midst of the holidays. But they did go unsupervised with the snow flocking machine in parts. Snow generally falls down, not sideways. Everything is coated with the flocking or at least has traces of it somewhere. You get covered in snow. You get covered in snow. You over there as well, you get covered in snow. What's underneath, over here? Why, it's snow! Look at me being a weather purist. 

 

The CGI-heavy opening car chase scene is… unexpected. Whether out of necessity (vehicular carnage is simply too expensive to execute realistically in Wales) or Evans is experimenting with the technology, for a filmmaker who has given us grounded action sequences since their arrival on the action scene, this was… again… unexpected. It is very kinetic and fast-paced, like cranked frame rates (another tool of the trade in that Golden Age), and it will take some getting used to. There is some jank in some of the vehicle animations in certain transition scenes later in the movie, which does not help the cause. 

 

The screenplay is one of Evans’ leanest to date; kind-of-bad kids get caught up in the actions of bad adults, and the bad cop looking to turn over a new leaf has to get the kids to safety before the adults murder them, murder them good. Overly familiar to action fans, it serves as a framework to move from one action set piece to another. It does not break rules, but follows them following the law of heroic bloodshed cinema: get your hero from one place to another until they are at their final destination, the point where they make a decision about their culpability or sacrifice themselves for the sake of innocents (but not really innocent in this case). 

 

Those stops along the way grow in size and increase in violence., A quick Traffic Jam scene rolls into the Evans-familiar night club scene, which rolls into the finale, the climax at the fishing cabin, which is not unlike the gunfights that take place at the home by the lake or the small chapel in Woo’s The Killer. The squibs are plentiful; the fake blood flows in rivulets across the screen. Who put all these holes in my Bag of Flesh?!? That’s what happens when you bring a pistol to a shotgun fight. And there are all sorts of gurgles and squishy sounds as each body struggles to hold that blood inside. We salute you, sound effects editor, Grace Averbuch. 

 

Evans had already explored the nightclub setting in his second Raid film, but he had introduced it in his narrative debut, Merantau, albeit on a much smaller scale. Nightclubs are never a safe bet on the regular; a night out on the town in Edwards’ universe is outright deadly. It has a terrific balance of melee and gun violence. You can always count on Triad gangs to bring the silverware with them to a fight. No artery is safe. 

 

We are compelled to mention that during this scene, the music department goes through a good chunk of French DJ Gesaffelstein’s playlist, maybe half of their 2013 album Aleph, near as we can tell. Who do we thank for that? Music executives Nicolette Di Dia and Bridget Ward? Also, a shout-out to Jason Lazarus and his terrific electronic score as well. 

 

In the climax, Evans appears to expand on the incredible English farmhouse shootout scene from episode five in season one of Gangs of London. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, it is their tribute to climactic battles, such as the church scene in The Killer. It starts familiarly like the GoL episode, a gang of gunmen walk up to the cabin and proceed to shoot the everloving fuck out of it. For six whole minutes. And that is just the first volley. Up and down, left and right, forwards and backwards, it’s a scene that everyone will go back to, time and time again, to watch. 

 

Full of pounding gun shots, you feel in your chest, the space fills up with sparks, splinters of wood and glass, flying around willy-nilly. Then it moves outside, and all the deception and betrayal are brought to light, and more gunfire erupts, and nearly everyone dies in a hail of bullets and gunshot. It is fucking glrious. 

 

Evans was once again joined by his go-to DOP, Matt Flannery, a gentleman who understands Evans’s action language and knows how kinetic the cameras need to be, following the action and motion as Evans had meticulously planned. Evans is a master of the craft, clearly, and has lost none of his edge. His action scenes are chaotic yet clearly defined in motion and purpose. We have always loved the twists and turns in their choreography, where you are watching one thing, then the camera continues on and follows someone else who just happened to be running by, it seems, as they careen into the fray. 

 

Havoc is a solid action flick that, once you understand its raison d'être, may not be the big crime epic you would expect from the Welsh filmmaker. Havoc is indeed a love letter to an era of action filmmaking that was formative not only for Evans but also for action filmmakers and stunt people who transitioned into action filmmakers. Films from the likes of Woo, Hark, and Lam established a new language of action filmmaking at the time. Evans has paid those who influenced him the respect they deserve with an action flick that emulates their strong points while adding his flourishes to the mix. 

 

Now, if you will excuse me, we’ve got six minutes set aside to watch that opening volley in the climax again.