Havoc

Cry Havoc! And let loose the dogs of boredom
dir: Gareth Evans
2025
It’s… it’s not good.
Why, yes, I did have sky high expectations based on this chap’s previous work. So if anyone’s at fault, it’s me. Certainly not the director or the star of this misbegotten amalgamation of every action film from the last forty years.
I can see what he was going for, I honestly can. Before I even read a word of an interview where Evans specifically says he wanted to capture the feel and the energy of John Woo flicks from the late 80s early 90s (more A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled rather than his Hollywood flicks), I could tell.
But that’s not what we’ve got. What we’ve got is Tom Hardy playing a corrupt cop who mumbles his way through a flick constructed with city scenes that are, honest to goodness, computer generated rather than filmed on a city street. Like, I could have recorded that same kind of second unit filler footage on my phone, and it would have looked better, and no-one would be able to tell it was downtown Melbourne if I got the angle right.
This film tries to transpire in a generic American city, and yet it was made in Wales. In fucking Wales! Why aren’t there Welsh people talking about being The Only Gay in the Village or saying elaborate pronunciations of Welsh names like Myfanwy or Owain Glyndwr out loud?
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