Havoc

I was waiting for this movie to be released for as long as it has been announced, and now that the wait is finally over - it's definitely disappointing.

Clearly something must have happened to the original execution of this movie. It was quietly delayed for years and was released on streaming just as quietly. It's certainly no "Raid", it's more like a tired Jason Statham type movie. Some of the things in it are plain bizzare, such as the setting. This feels like Gotham or some alternative version of RoboCop's Detroit. The CGI is awful, it's so weird it us even present here in such copious amounts considering what the director is known for. The story is simple, yet indescribably odd. The lighting is also a weak point of this movie. The casting is superb and some of the fights are fine, but again, coming from Gareth Evans it's a bare minimum of what you'd expect. This isn't a terrible movie by any stretch and you can enjoy it for what it turned out to be, but you have to keep your expectations surprisingly low.

The highlight of the movie is probably the club fight with Gesaffelstein blasting, but that's as good as it gets. Overall, pretty passable.

I was so excited going into this movie. For 4 years I've been waiting for this one. I was sadly disappointed. Even though I wasn't expecting a story driven movie, the plot is surprisingly dull. The action at times was cool, but I felt the camera movement was too much. I just don't think the action was up to what Gareth is capable of. I do think some of it might be because of the bigger names in the film. I still felt the choreography could have been better. It never felt like the main characters were in any danger. The Netflix cgi is always strange to me and doesn't look real at all. I hate to even talk about one of my favorite director's work like this, but it is what it is. I was sadly disappointed. I also didn't help myself by watching the raid movies before this one.

Shooting is cartoony, characters miss a whole lot but fire a lot of bullets with almost no precision, combat is visceral, satisfying and gory and in style of the director, very similar in the way it was shot to the legendary The Raid, camera follows the action closely but as the action itself is hectic so is the camera so a lot of the scenes move really fast and have quick cuts in between action pieces.

Story is predictable and you start to understand the whole narrative in the first 30 mins and characters are too one dimensional to even slightly care about them.

Tom Hardy gives a slightly better performance here than he did in Venom, his character is gruff, gritty and jaded and he manages to somewhat sell it, but he shines in his fight choreography which is simply put glorious and over the top.

Gun violence on the other hand seems too gratuitous, characters suffer multiple injuries yet somehow are still left standing and are able to one shot someone else. Precision is completely thrown out the window in some segments of the movie, in one scene a character is shot through a car window with a shotgun blast that barely scratches him and in the next a character riding a train is shot down multiples times from a big distance with a pistol.

The entirety of the traffic in the movie is for some reason almost completely computer generated, cars move unrealistically and really look out of place, ruining the immersion and making the whole viewing experience seem really cheap. Pistols sound epic but not in a realistic way as every pistol fired sounds like a cannon being shot and a lot of pistols in the movie seem to have rapid fire capabilities in one scene then suddenly becoming single shot in the next. Submachine guns firing sounds like miniguns.

You really have to suspend your disbelief when watching this movie as it's so hilariously unrealistic.

Ok, this action packed crime film is bloody, brutal, gritty, but the importance of bodycount makes you get rif off your head the rest of the story. No one cares about the intrigue which only a handful of us will follow. The action is really powerful, well made, but the camera work is also "too much", it may make you dizzy. The action scene in the night club is inspired from JOHN WICK, maybe more than the previous THE RAID films - directed by the same guy. And this scene is too long for me, I nearly felt bored. The ending is lousy. Yes, a forgettable film. Tom Hardy is just OK. Not more. I prefered THE RAID features; concerning GANGS OF LONDON, I have not watched yet - also made by Gareth Evans.

I looked forward to this one, my expectations were high. But yet again I was disappointed. As a matter of fact, I didn't even manage to finish it. Gave it about 48 minutes when I decided I had enough. The biggest problem with this movie is, like with so many others, I just didn't care. Even when a movie is violent and gritty, to get involved in it, you'd at least need to feel for someone. Have some compassion for someone, hope that someone survives, gets revenge and "saves the day". None of that in this one. Couldn't care less about who got hurt, shot, kidnapped or killed. Even if they would've killed Hardy off, I would've shrugged it off. Whatever.

All it is, is a chain of uninteresting bad guys (and bad girls) running around in an ugly scenery beating each other up and killing each other. Maybe it's just me, but I was bored.

4 Stars because it's Tom Hardy. But it's time they upgrade him to what he really deserves. 007 Maybe?