dikablo

Gareth Evans is a talented director with a distinctive taste for true action, with movies like The Raid and TV series like Gangs of London on his resume, but for this one, Havoc didn't contain much anarchy and chaos as expected.

Even while gathering a pretty packed cast, including the one and only Tom Hardy, marking his return to the cinema (outside of the Venom universe, of course), The Godfather of Harlem's Forest Whitaker, our favourite US Marshal Timothy Olyphant and the star of Netflix's Shadow and Bone series, Jessie Mei Li.

A crashing team, it seems, but the dough didn't turn out well, though.

We get fantastic camerawork throughout the whole flick and especially on the opening car chase scene that would let the adrenaline rush right in, setting the tone for much more that was supposed to come but didn't.

The story follows the brute and gritty Tom Hardy as Walker, a broken-up family man who thinks he didn't lose his ethical book on the way to the top of the corrupted system of a Gotham-like city's washed-up streets.

Washed up and dry, like his actual sense of humour during the movie, leaving with questions like What was all with the weird sighs and tongue play in the middle of dialogues?

He takes on the job of retrieving back the son of the elected mayor with a pencil behind the ear for extra sharp concentration and Batman's crime scene recollecting modelling.

It's a ride with straightforward, typical gang wars and betrayal plots. Blood on the snow during Christmas to get the spirits literally sky high on a night where everyone's a frenemy And a one-man army with no fear of some more doses of guilt.

It takes a whole hour till we get our first hand-to-hand combat scene in a lower-budget John Wick's neon club fight version and The Weeknd's beats hitting hard in the background but not hard enough like Hardy's drop-kicks.

The sound design is on point with every bone crush and blood spurt from slow-motion kills, Max Payne style, but the logic is super stupid, if I may say so. Like, yeah, just walk down the stairs in the middle of a shoot-out just to get one in the head.

And why don't the clips run out of rounds?

It isn't a modded video game after all, even though we get Watch Dogs Legion illuminating masks.

The second fight action scene introduced is the final predictable showdown with cheesy deaths and sacrifices and the illusion of an idea that redemption lies withinh (or jail) for the forsaken tormented heroes.

Lacking in action and emotional engagement, with much unnecessary anticipation and investigation to fill it near two hours run.

Beauty is pain.

Brave is beautiful.

Such a bold first full-length entry from the newcomer Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt to make your eyes pop out, jaws drop, and even your toes cut off perhaps? Who knows, Anyway, it's a skinless, fresh and realistic take on one of Disney's childhood gem stories with a 180-degree change of point of view, as you get to experience this whole fairytale from the shoes of Elvira(Lea Myren, a pure new talent coming from the land of midnight the eldest daughter of what's supposed to be the newly gold-digging stepmother of Agnes, a.k.a. Cinderella (Thea Sofie Loch Naess, which you may recognise from The Last Kingdom show), with a head full of dreams and afterthoughts of becoming Prince Charming's one and only wed-to-be virgin.

The movie immerses you into a world of fancy dresses that no one could even afford nowadays, carriages, strolls, folk music and late-night dance balls as it kicks off with a Downton Abbey entrance and welcoming scene to the new family members in the royal sand of Swedlandia and treats you to even a short intro theme.

You get castle-up-the-hill vibes from raw cinematography filled with grain that takes you to explore the world from Elvira's dreamy and wandering eyes that keep on striding for what it is to be a princess.

Drying up roses between the pages of old yellow books? Or maybe attending the school of proper princesses that can hold a book over their heads for miles and miles... all while waiting for white pigeons to come and sit on her room's window for a sign of something better to come her way.

The story keeps taking dark and gloomy turns along the almost two-hour run with a sickly sense of humour that doesn't just elaborate on the whole narrative but even utilises disgust as a main element for scenes of profound body horror. Creating a nice mix of genres that unravels throughout the flick, making you wonder if there is even a good side to root for in a Disney tale turned dark with spiderwebs, dark clouds and the art of the old ages' cosmetic surgeries(like the tapeworm solution), instead of rainbows and butterflies to fill the screen with.

Mesmerising and unique cocktail of EDM music accompanies old folk rhythms and levels up some scenes which sounded and looked great.

Nudity is at its maximum for more enjoyment, of course, since it's released by Shudder, which is a network well-known for giving free space for, well, the bold and naked.

Beside the main character Elvira, we get introduced to a Cinderella with an agenda, as she herself is trying to scratch her way out from a revolving black hole that centres the family and a dooshbag quarterback wannabe prince that thinks the main course of every meal is between the legs of another virgin Mary that can't wait to get a bite out of him.

And of course the evil stepmother that always knows better, leading her daughter to a spiralling void of doom, created by her own hands and mind with the passion of becoming prettier and more beautiful while trying to conceal the killer insecurities and the loud voices that scream "what if" at the bounce of the clock to eventually pay the cost of pleasure and the price of chasing a foggy dream, in other words, to be on the loser side.

It leads to a climactic crescendo with a few senseless plot holes and a few "whys" that I believe weren't necessary.

To collect a hopeless ending caught right from Elvira's eyes.

It tells us about the importance of self-love at the core of it and that what matters is on the inside, and the show must go on whether the shoe fits or not or whether you are willing to jump into Elvira's shoe or not to have this watch.

So paws up and a smile!.

Well, it throws you off the bat! (not really, just kidding).

I was much excited with the aesthetic, a stranded ship on the edge of the universe,

A semi-failed critical save-the-mankind mission, robotic voices echoing through blood puddles and, of course, our final girl Eiza Gonzalez with dementia?

The very vacant first 20 minutes don't set the tone for anything.

The first half of the movie was pretty empty and more of a filler rather than an intriguing slow-burn unfolding scene by scene.

It combines clichés from middleweight movies that came in the nineties and the eighties with a narrow creative vision yet a distorted story that draws you into a game-like atmosphere, delivering vibes from Dead Space (the last ten minutes-ish went full-on for this one), Prey, Scorn and mostly, I think, Mouthwashing, the indie game from last year that I think could have inspired the story concept indirectly.

The flick is directed by Flying Lotus, which I honestly have never heard of before, with a limited cast including Eiza Gonzalez, like I said previously, and Aaron Paul.

There's a good tension between the two, and Aaron Paul is great as always, stealing the highlight in every scene, though most the enigmatic conversations lead to nowhere, with more flashbacks adding more holes to a plot that's not cooked enough, even though the second half took it a step up.

There's good ambient background music and a red and blue hue for a more expressive visual taste.

It's like looking through old 3D glasses, but I don't have anything more to say, I think.

A B-class watch to enjoy with a meal, with the real star of the show being a med-bot that hits his lines perfectly every single time.