Havoc Parent Guide

In a crime-ridden city full of dirty politicians and morally corrupt police, Detective Walker (Tom Hardy) is still reeling from a drug bust gone horribly wrong when he’s called in for a new case. A gang of drug dealers has been gunned down in their own club, and the only lead is a politician’s estranged son. As Walker becomes entangled in the case, he is drawn into a web of corruption where his life is threatened at every turn.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “that plot synopsis is pretty generic” then we’re on the same page. If all I had been given was a full plot summary, I could have sworn I’d seen this movie before. Watching it, however, it soon became very clear that I hadn’t because I would have remembered this inordinate amount of gratuitous violence. Havoc is nothing more than an excuse to stylishly film as many deaths as possible and drain the nearest special effects studio of fake blood. I have a relatively strong stomach for this type of action violence, but even I was taken aback by the brutality. I will begrudgingly admit that Gareth Evans has a knack for this type of filmmaking: although I found some of the shaky cam annoying, I must give him credit for the cinematography which is objectively beautiful, if you can look past the subject matter.

Surrounding the bloodshed is… not much else. There are far too many characters, none of whom I cared about, and a story that is simultaneously too complicated and boringly shallow. The performances themselves are all fantastic, so the production’s problems are not for lack of acting talent. There are a few fight sequences that are exciting and creative, but because I didn’t care about the characters, I just found myself rolling my eyes every time another seemingly endless barrage of disposable goons appeared.

With far more brutality than I expected, as well as what I believe to be a record-breaking number of f-bombs for one of my reviews, I cannot recommend this film to anybody. Havoc doesn’t have anything interesting to say, nor does it do anything new with the genre to justify its existence.

About author

Savannah Sillito

Savannah Sillito is a librarian with a master's in library science, a bachelor's degree in English, and a certificate in early childhood education. She enjoys nonfiction books, travel, and is a staunch proponent of the Oxford comma.