Havoc

 Do you like John Woo? Do you really like John Woo? That Welsh action auteur Gareth Evans really likes John Woo has been clear for a long time - it was made crystal clear during The Raid 2, and in that standout Gangs of London episode where everyone and everything gets the shit shot out of it but real good; Nothing says gritty street-level crime drama like a guy getting perforated two dozen times by high-velocity rounds and still somehow dragging himself up to make a last stand, right? Well, maybe not, but it is pretty Woo.

 Havoc - a film that's had a pretty rough go of it since filming wrapped in 2021 - is only a few doves away from being extremely fucking Woo. People slide on different surfaces discharging weapons. Petty criminals and rookie cops turn out to be born naturals at inflicting all sorts of violence. No one ever runs out of ammo, and people never get shot just once - no one dies until a at least a full machinegun's worth of lead is emptied into their torso... and sometimes not even then. Bullet impacts set off detonations all over the scenery, and great, big, videogamey gouts of blood burst out of spasming bodies, giving the bigger shootouts an oddly festive feel. It's not all that aesthetically equivalent (more on that later), but it definitely felt to me like Evans is paying tribute to the master.

 The plot, meanwhile, is where things veer slightly away from John Woo territory. Evan's script is just as heightened, melodramatic and over-the-top, and it does feature a central redemption story - but it's all quite a bit grittier, a little murkier; There's no glamourizing protagonist Patrick Walker (Tom Hardy), for example. He's a dirty cop and deadbeat father who's introduced buying a shitty, last-minute Christmas present for his estranged daughter while giving his adorable rookie cop partner (Jessie Mei Li) all sorts of shit.

 Walker stumbles into a nasty shootout at a Chinese club that leads him into a tangled, improbable yarn to try and protect the son of a powerful local politician from both Chinese Triads and corrupt cops. Evan's script starts with a bang - an exhilarating truck chase that achieves an incredible sense of speed and risk, and ends with a car getting totalled by a washing machine. The scenes that follow slow down for an hour or so to lay down the plot needed to carry things towards a couple of long, extremely involved action scenes, but violence is never far under the skin; Most of these scenes end with someone getting shot or a stabbed.

 The plot itself is fairly by-the-numbers and requires some pretty dodgy coincidences to move things forward, especially as things move towards the final series of confrontations. All characters except Walker (ably played by Hardy) are thinly sketched types fleshed out by a stacked cast of established charismatic actors (Robert Whittaker, Luis Guzmán, Timothy Olyphant) and some great finds (Yeo Yann Yann, Mei Li, and MMA-turned-stuntwoman Michelle Waterson, who gets both the best fight and the best death in the movie).

 It's all about the action, of course, and while it clearly belongs to a latter, slightly lesser era (one where they let computers handle most of the squibs), Evans and his crew do fine by Woo's legacy and all the other Hong Kong action movies that influenced them, while keeping a more modern, chaotic style.

 There's very little concern for realism - this is the sort of movie where faceless mooks will often pop into the scene and patiently wait to be shot by the protagonists - but that scarcely matters, and neither does a slightly too-artificial look that's concealed under a ton of digital grain and a style that leans more jittery and chaotic than anything Woo did in his heyday.

 What does matter is that even as it looks artificial, it looks good, and that the camera work is tight, flowing and exciting, every now and then indulges in Evans' signature flourish, a tilt to follow a swinging club or a falling body. The fights are full of the sort of creative brutality that makes you laugh out loud in gleeful disbelief... What more can you ask for?
 The sound design is exhausting in the best way possible - not as good as Warfare, maybe, but the many, many different reports from these guns are worthy of the destruction they wreak.

 Violence is gratuitous and all-encompassing in this world; when someone swings a cleaver, you can bet you'll see the results of their efforts, innocents are mercilessly mowed down (another Hong Kong staple) and the only bit of glass that isn't shattered in a fight is there just so you can see a man's face smashed against it from the other side. If that sort of thing is not for you, well... you're out of luck.

 For the rest of us, this is a very well-made action film that delivers everything it sets out to do. It's not as good as The Raid or Merantau, it doesn't have as much cool stuff going on as The Raid 2, and it's not as relentless as that one Gangs of London episode. But even with its limited budget and scope it confirms Gareth Evans as one of our finest working action directors. Now let's hope it doesn't take him five years to get his next picture off the ground.