3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Havoc

2025, Gareth Evans (The Raid: Redemption) -- Netflix

I am doing something I don't consider very often, if ever -- started the stub post before I am even half way through the movie. I barely ever watch movies straight through these days, but this one jumped out at me almost immediately that screamed, "Do some research, find out why you are seeing what you are seeing on the screen." So, I paused and here I am.

Literally from the get go, which starts the movie with a chase scene -- cops after a semi-truck driven by thieves in LED masks, you can see that .... well, none of it is real. There are little to no practical effects  happening here, almost the entirety of the scene is CGI & greenscreen and, well this is why I had to go and Google it, maybe some AI. From the chase scene we go to the dirty, grimy unnamed American city which is so CGI enhanced I could easily think I was watching a movie set in the same Batman world of Penguin. It was all very very surreal to look at. And yet, somehow alluring and... successful?

I could not shake the feeling I was playing a computer game.

Later; having watched what remained. Said research told me this was an Evans movie, but that became apparent soon after I passed the above preamble.

And for maybe for that reason, it really appealed to me?

At its core, this is a Gareth Evans movie, i.e. an Asian ultra-violent action movie. How exactly does a label stick to a guy after such a short career? He so very much veered away with The Apostle which traded in his Indonesian martial arts and gunplay for ... his own roots? It was a familiar UK rural horror mystery. Evans is Welsh. This movie returns to his earlier successes but given I didn't know that going in (it was a Tom Hardy violent cop movie on Netflix; perfect for my current mindset), I was kind of surprised once it became apparent.

OK. Walker (Tom Hardy, Taboo) is a corrupt cop in a nameless American city that mashes up Chicago, NYC and Gotham, but a man with some regrets. The opening violent CGI rendered chase scene ends at a Triad club where a couple of the heist kids are paying off some debt to a gangster named Tsui, when a trio of hockey-masked gunmen come in and shoot up the place. When Walker shows up, rookie "not-partner" Ellie (Jesse Mei Li, Shadow and Bone) in tow, it becomes apparent the kids were not the shooters, like all the cops on scene want to assume, but escaped after being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, one of the kids is Charlie (Justin Cornwell, Bel-Air), the son on a wealthy & powerful, but corrupt, city official (Forest Whitaker, Andor) whom Walker is also under the thumb of. This is all well trod dirty cop movie territory.

At this point, the Peanut Gallery, wandered in during one of my sessions, and asked, "Is that supposed to be snow? It looks more like ash...." Yes, the CGI continues throughout the movie making the Xmas setting look more post-apocalyptic when the AI prompt was likely "make the snow look dirty".

The above establishing act is followed by two acts where Walker learns what is going on, and tries to get the kids to safety while being chased by the Triad who assumes the kids killed Tsui. There are a lot of Triad members -- like an endless stream of video game spawned NPCs. The three hockey-masked gunmen (including Timothy Olyphant The Mandalorian), who turn out to be Walker's fellow corrupt cops, have not taken well to his emerging regrets about being dirty, and also want the kids dead, as witnesses / survivors. Everything is tied together, to Walker, to each other, to the corruption at the heart of the movie.

The second act takes place in a club, their John Wick moment, but replacing the precise gunplay of that movie with frenetic blade & gun & kicks. This fight scene is crunchy. Part of me chuckled as I was reminded of the Burly Brawl, doors constantly opening, spilling forth even more Triad gang members, giving us a triangle of violence. With some sacrifices, Walker and the kids escape.

The convoluted, not very clearly mapped plot ends up leading everyone to Walker's hideout, a shack of oddly connected, barely standing rooms that struck me more as the setting for a gun-toting escape room than a movie set. Again, NPCs galore, all shooting and stabbing and kicking each other, ending in a reveal of who-killed-who-why. Its all rather ridiculous, with the fake blood spraying in gouts worthy of a slasher movie, and a pretty-much-everyone-dies moment but that's what we wanted here, right?

Critics seem to hesitantly love the movie, maybe because Evans so unabashedly loves the genre he choses to embrace. The mashup of Asian action "kung fu friday" cinema with dirty cop & neo-noir setting work well for the film minded, but the audience.... not so much. I can see why. On its dirty-snow surface, its almost a farce. But I enjoyed myself.