Gareth Evans

Havoc

27/04/25

Netflix

Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans first came to prominence with his martial arts epic The Raid in 2011. An inevitable sequel (imaginatively entitled The Raid 2) followed in 2014, but his last big-screen release, The Apostle (2018), came and went with barely a ripple. So Havoc is clearly an important project for Evans. Which may explain why it feels like the very definition of the word ‘overkill.’

To be fair, it starts well. The action takes place in an unspecified American city – actually a heavily-CGI’d Cardiff. Grizzled cop Walker (Tom Hardy) is at an all-night garage, hastily trying to buy a Christmas gift for the twelve-year-old daughter he rarely ever sees. (Mind you, we don’t get to see much of her either.) Walker, it quickly becomes clear, is a dodgy copper, but then he’s not alone. Every member of the police force we meet in this story is on the take, apart from Ellie (Jessie Mai Li), who has only recently taken up her post as Walker’s sidekick.

After a drug deal goes wrong, Charlie (Justin Cornwell), the son of crusading politician, Lawrence Beaumont (an underused Forest Whitaker), finds himself hunted by a vengeful Chinese gang leader, who lost her own son in the resulting gunfire. Walker is ‘persuaded’ by Beaumont – yes, he’s also dodgy – to rescue Charlie, in exchange for a pardon for former crimes…

But the plot hardly matters, since Havoc – as the name might imply – is mostly an excuse to string together a series of action set-pieces. The first of them, the aforementioned ‘drug deal gone wrong’, is nicely staged, with some artfully-filmed slo-mo sequences and, what’s more, it’s relatively brief. But having dipped his bread in the old red stuff, Evans (who also wrote the screenplay) seems determined to serve up an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet of mayhem and murder.

The action becomes increasingly incoherent. People don’t just get shot and fall down, they dance around the screen spouting blood like human colanders. There’s a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ammunition and the Chinese drug gang employs an infinite number of human targets, all of whom appear to exist simply to run gleefully towards their own destruction. You’d need an abacus to keep a record of the body count.

For me, the main problem here is that, aside from Ellie, every character I meet is a villain of the lowest order and, while it’s not impossible to get audiences to root for bad people, you first have to know something about them in order to care what happens. But I know hardly anything about anybody and that includes Walker. Somewhere in this mess, excellent actors like Timothy Olyphant and Richard Harrington struggle to make any impression, as they are inextricably lost in a tidal wave of blood and bullets. As Havoc thunders towards its final, protracted punch-up, I’m already wistfully looking forward to the credits.

This one is clearly made for diehard action freaks and doubtless it will scare up some kind of an audience on Netflix – but for me it’s too loud, too messy and too downright unbelievable.

2.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Monkey Man

07/04/24

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Dev Patel’s debut film as a director is an ultra-violent revenge thriller set in an Indian city called Yatana that looks very much like Mumbai. Patel plays Kid, a man entirely motivated by the need to find the corrupt Police Chief, Rana (Sikandar Kher), who is responsible for the brutal murder of Kid’s mother back when he actually was a, well, kid. Why it’s taken him so long to get around to this is never explained.

Kid currently earns a buck by taking part in a series of no-holds-barred fights, hosted by sleazy MC, Tiger (Sharlto Copley), and attended by baying crowds. He hides his identity behind a realistic monkey mask – inspired by the Indian god, Hanuman – but he doesn’t win his bouts, preferring instead to make easy money by taking dives. Meanwhile, he finds a way of procuring work as a barman at the swish city nightclub where he knows Rana likes to spend his spare time. His sole ambition is to get to Rana and kill him.

While Monkey Man has a distinctive look (largely thanks to cinematographer Sharon Weir) and occasionally hints at the more interesting film it could have been, it feels hampered by its reductive plot and an evident desire to be a kind of Asian John Wick. Those films are actually mentioned by one character early on and, in the final extended punch-up, where Kid fights his way from the basement of the hotel to the VIP room at the top, it’s hard not to think of Gareth Evans’ The Raid – though these films feel almost restrained compared to the levels of bone-snapping, blood-drenched violence on offer here. That 18 certificate is there for a reason.

Patel’s character dominates the film to the extent that none of the other actors gets much of a look in. An early attempt to introduce perky sidekick, Alphonso (Pitobash), is disappointingly abandoned, and Kid’s brief interplay with a sympathetic sex worker, Sita (Sobita Dhulipala), is never allowed to develop into anything more substantial.

Occasionally Patel – who co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Angunawela and John Collee – tries to usher in more original elements. There are references to Indian folklore, pastoral flashbacks to Kid’s rural childhood and there are some astute observations about bogus spiritual leaders, who exploit the poverty of their followers, but these themes are repeatedly punched and kicked into submission by a seemingly endless succession of extended fight scenes. The first one, set largely in a kitchen (with a varied supply of potential weapons), is brilliantly choreographed and has me flinching and gasping in all the right places. But it’s followed by another fight and then another one and the repetitiveness of them begins to work against the material.

Eventually, I start to feel bludgeoned and bored, which I’m pretty sure is not the effect Patel was looking for.

In the chaos of flying fists and breaking bones, I also find myself asking questions. If Kid simply wants revenge on a single man, why not wait until he’s alone, rather than surrounded by hundreds of bodyguards? What’s the point is maiming all those people who are simply carrying out their duties? (Mind you, I’d be the first to admit that wouldn’t make for a particularly memorable film, either.)

Action junkies will doubtless tell me that I’m wrong about Monkey Man, that it’s a kick-ass, adrenalin-fuelled marvel, but the occasional flashes of brilliance it does contain merely enforce my view that this film could so easily have been an absolute knockout, instead of the long and messy brawl that it is.

3 stars

Philip Caveney