Director - Gareth Evans
Cast - Tom Hardy, Jessie Mei Li, Justin Cornwell, Quelin Sepulveda, Luis Guzmán, Yeo Yann Yann, Timothy Olyphant, Forest Whitaker
Run Time – 107 Minutes
 
If Home Alone had been directed by a sleep-deprived, bullet-happy Hong Kong auteur with a soft spot for morally bankrupt cops, you might end up somewhere near Havoc. Gareth Evans' blood-slicked, neon-lit Netflix outing is what happens when you stuff The Raid, Bad Lieutenant, and A Charlie Brown Christmas into a blender and hit "obliterate."
 
Tom Hardy stars as Walker — and if that name sounds like the kind of guy who chews gravel for breakfast and considers hand sanitizer an insult to personal grit, that’s exactly the point. Walker is the last semi-functional cog in a sleazy narcotics task force, trudging through a grimy, unnamed city that looks like Gotham got left in the rain. It's Christmas Eve. There's corruption. There’s cocaine. And by the 15-minute mark, there’s already a child casually handling a handgun. Merry freakin’ Christmas.
 
Hardy plays Walker with the hunched weariness of a man who’s been sleep-fighting crime in his dreams. His face does most of the talking — mostly grunts, sneers, and one long, exasperated exhale that might be the emotional climax of the movie. He’s paired with rookie cop Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), whose main job is to be the audience’s stand-in, repeatedly asking “Wait, what is even going on?” as we descend deeper into the movie’s aggressively tangled plot.
 
To call Havoc a crime thriller is like calling a tornado a stiff breeze. There’s a plot, technically — something about corrupt cops, a drug heist involving cocaine hidden in washing machines, and a mayoral candidate’s son who moonlights as a criminal mastermind for reasons that remain foggy at best. But really, the film is just a series of violently operatic vignettes, stitched together with enough fake blood and slow-motion to qualify as an experimental music video for someone like Gesaffelstein. And in fact, Gesaffelstein is actually on the soundtrack, which means you're either in for a vibey, industrial nightmare or an EDM-flavored migraine, depending on your patience.
 
The film peaks during a jaw-dropping nightclub massacre that feels like a deleted scene from John Wick’s more goth cousin. It’s kinetic, chaotic, and honestly kind of mesmerizing — if only the rest of the movie had this clarity of purpose. Evans, whose action chops remain undeniable, choreographs violence like a ballet with bullet wounds. The man knows how to kill with style. Unfortunately, when the guns stop, so does the momentum.
 
The real problem isn’t the violence — it’s the vacuum. The characters are so emotionally hollow, you could hide another stash of narcotics in them. Forest Whitaker and Timothy Olyphant show up to class things up, but they seem to know they’re guests at a demolition derby dressed in tuxedos. Quelin Sepulveda, as the tough, neon-haired Mia, briefly sparks life into the narrative, and frankly, the movie would’ve been better off if it had followed her instead of our brooding bruiser cop.
 
By the time Havoc reaches its cabin-in-the-woods finale, you’re less concerned about who survives and more about when you can go home. The film doesn’t so much end as collapse, a heap of bodies, backstory, and convoluted betrayals crumpled into a final, exhausting shootout.
 
Havoc is what happens when someone lets the action guy write the whole script — a visually arresting, emotionally vacant fever dream with the narrative cohesion of a smashed snow globe. It’s chaotic, brutal, and occasionally brilliant in short bursts, but like its protagonist, it’s too busy staggering through wreckage to notice it’s bleeding out.