'Havoc' A Review

Havoc is an action crime movie about Patrick(Tom Hardy) a cop who's under the thumb of a local real estate developer and mayoral candidate Lawrence(Forest Whitaker). When Lawrence's son Charlie(Justin Cornwell) gets involved in a convoluted drug deal hijack gone wrong Patrick is called in to find and protect him battling other corrupt cops, Charlie's little gang, and a baffling army of Triads on the way.

Hardy is the only one really believable or interesting in the cast, he's unquestionably a Star and his natural gravitas and commitment go a long way to make this movie somewhat palatable. The rest of the cast, whose talent is not in question, really struggle to bring any sense of reality, fun, or thrill to the overly complicated and quite frankly boring plot as well as the absolutely leaden script.

Visually the movie is pretty frustrating, it opens with some extended CGI car chases that look straight out of Grand Theft Auto on top of tons of CGI muzzle flashes and blood spurts as the fight scenes ramp up. The fight choreography seems competent but its frequently hard to distinguish given the camera movement and the characters are so lifeless it's virtually impossible to care who lives and who dies. The movie was shot in writer/director Gareth Evans home country of Wales(his stated purpose was to bring money back to his home, good for him) but incongruously set in a nameless crime ridden US city(presumably NYC or Chicago) and as a result almost all the exteriors are CGI'd and all the interiors don't look appropriate. All in all it's a mess.

Another in Netflix's long line of stunningly flat, underbaked, over produced action flicks.

Currently streaming on Netflix.

Don't See It.