Tom Hardy

Jessie Mei Li

Timothy Olyphant

Forest Whitaker

Justin Cornwell

Quelin Sepulveda

Luis Guzmán

Sunny Pang

Yeo Yann Yann

Michelle Waterson-Gomez

Jim Caesar

Xelia Mendes-Jones

Lockhart Ogilvie

Richard Harrington

Serhat Metin

Gordon Alexander

John Cummins

Megan Lockhurst

Jade Ogugua

Jack Morris

Gareth Tidball

Narges Rashidi

Astrid Fox-Sahan

Alan Leong

Jeremy Ang Jones

Aaron Ly

Jennifer Armour

Clarence Smith

Albert Tang

Tom Wu

Jill Winternitz

Stacy Sobieski

Odimegwu Okoye

Sharon D. Clarke

Jon-Scott Clark

Kage Jakubiec

Samya De Meo

Adam Bendall

Arun Kapur

Atul Sharma

Bailey Cameron

Christopher Ashman

Christopher Maleki

Dan Brothers

Daniel Joseph Woolf

Darryl Bradford

David Cheung

Emma Kaler

Eric Sirakian

Erol Mehmet

George Gjiggy Francis

Joe David Walters

Matthew Lee

Maurizio Posteraro

Mikey Fantham

Nicole Joseph

Oliver Harnett

Patrick Loh

Pino Maiello

Richard Chan

Richard Pepper

Rui Shang

Sam Byrne

Timothy Hornor

Volenté Lloyd

Faye Boustead

Joelle Rumbelow

Liam Lock

Sam Stokes

James McGeown

Julia Schunevitsch

Sarah Dibsdall

Kelly Valentine Hendry

Claire Pritchard

Andre Harihandoyo

Xavier Gens

Elis Howell Griffiths

Joss Colin

Adrian Yew Erman

Jacob Tomuri

Adrian Derrick-Palmer

Oleg Podobin

Christina Petrou

Imogen Arthur

Sian Jenkins

Matt Levin

Stephanie Whonsetler

Juliette Woodcock

Danny Hargreaves

Matt Flannery

Phoebe Robinson-Galvin

Alexander Bracq

Christina Low

Gareth Evans

Ed Talfan

Aram Tertzakian

Cristian Knight

Tyler Bates

Sara Jones

Matt Platts-Mills

Tom Pearce

Laura Swift

Jack Wong Wai-Leung

Aria Prayogi

Action

Crime

Thriller

Havoc

XYZ Films

Severn Screen

One More One Productions

United Kingdom

United States of America

广州话 / 廣州話

English

winter

detective

rescue mission

shootout

dirty cop

criminal underworld

crooked politician

estranged son

aggressive

insecure

christmas

grim

drug deal

dreary

night club

brutal violence

I'm a big Tom Hardy fan, a so it gives me no pleasure whatsoever, to say that "Havoc", a film he stars in, isn't good, at all. 

Its not Hardy's fault, nor for that matter, is it the fault of the cast, in general. This thing fails because it crudely glues together, almost every tired  cop film cliche you can think of and hope's it amounts to something. 

The result, as you might expect, is aimless, tedious, shallow and for me at least, unwatchable. I managed about half of this hoary affair, before calling it quits. 

In short, no amount of decent acting can survive a dismal script. A truly marginal watch, at best. 

Best film I've seen in 2025. Unrelenting chaos, gore, ultra-violence. Not what I look for in a movie usually but just the right feel for our time. 

Plot development: unload a magazine of rounds, and then another. The writers and director keep the finger on the trigger. If you have a sense of humour you will make it.

The cgi/ai overlays which usually put me off give the scenes a fluffiness with a gamer feel. Much of the camera work is like in-game play. A raw, textured, grim cyberpunk style and low bass sounds evoke a club music video style until the action kicks off. 

I could say Tom Hardy's intensity drives the story but the whole thing is intense, every action and character is caught in the raw. Jessie Mei Li's well-played character Ellie is the one who stands morally uncompromised in the mayhem, the innocent through whose unflinching eyes we observe with horror the unfolding crazy. 

My favourite scene is the night club gun fight starting with the rolling train and the low beats gathering into a breaking storm of tightly choreographed fight vignettes. Lots of great fight scenes, gun sounds and action flows. 

Havoc is the war of all-against-all playing out on the streets as our liberal democracies slide into a state of nature. Any attempt to make good by Hardy's character is engulfed by the force of events.

Unfiltered. 2025 needs this movie.

Chris Sawin

In 2021, Gareth Evans (The Raid films, Apostle) finished filming the action thriller Havoc starring Tom Hardy for Netflix. But just like any film, Havoc needed reshoots. Due to scheduling conflicts and the SAG-AFTRA strike, Havoc sat stagnant until 2025 when it was finally released on Netflix with little to no marketing ahead of time.

Patrick Walker (Hardy) is a homicide detective who has lost everything due to what he has given to his job. Set in a corrupt US city that is never named, Walker has lost everything because he has put his all into his work. It’s Christmas Eve and Walker’s ex-wife won’t let him see his six-year-old daughter because of how much of a crooked asshole he’s become.

A group of thieves steal a truckload of washing machines full of cocaine to smooth things over with the local Chinese crime syndicate led by a man named Tsui. However, right when the deal seems to be going in the right direction a group of masked men burst in with assault rifles and gun everyone down including Tsui.

Two surviving thieves, Charlie (Justin Cornwell) and Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) were caught on camera at the scene and are believed to be behind the assault. However, Charlie is the son of local mayoral candidate Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker). Walker has worked for Lawrence in many hush-hush jobs and now wants out. He agrees to find Charlie as his last job for Lawrence to get out for good, but Tsui’s mother (Yeo Yann Yann) has other ideas and craves revenge for her son’s death.

The days of Gareth Evans nearly dying while he shoots a practical car chase like in The Raid 2 are over as Havoc is undoubtedly filled with more VFX than both of The Raid films combined. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the VFX at least has its moments in the film. The unnamed city Havoc takes place in is gritty as hell. The colored fluorescent lighting of a city seemingly plagued by both constant rain and a slumbering city that never sees the sun adds incredible highlights to the film’s many car chases.

There’s also the element of possibly noticing Tom Hardy’s face being deep faked onto someone else during the sequences involving heavy hand-to-hand combat. Considering Hardy has three stunt doubles credited in the film’s cast (one for driving and two for action), this is probably true.

The story (or a lack of one) has also been a complaint of the film. Havoc plays out like a noir film with a mystery that isn’t entirely difficult to solve. The film has story beats that are similar to The Raid films and whether you can look past that or not because it’s by the same filmmaker is entirely up to you.

Personally speaking, Havoc is an intense-as-hell action film that is riveting for all of its nearly two-hour duration. The VFX are bit of an adjustment especially since in some of the sequences involving cop cars they seem to float along on the nighttime concrete roads that are unnaturally fast. But this is easy to look past since it doesn’t last long.

Havoc opens with a gnarly car chase between a semi-truck and several cop cars. The POV throws you directly in harm’s way with all of the crunching metal, broken headlights, and screaming sirens. The exhilarating sequence culminates with a whole ass washing machine filled to the brim with cocaine being thrown through the windshield of a cop car.

Performance-wise, Patrick Walker is Eddie Brock but with uncensored vulgarity. There’s a sequence where Tom Hardy spits out “I’M A F***ING COP” and he’s just doing the Venom voice. But Hardy’s familiar performance in Havoc works as a guy who has seemingly become numb to everyone around him and is honestly only investing in one last-ditch effort to hopefully be reunited with his family.

Patrick Walker is also very messy in appearance much like Eddie Brock in the two Venom sequels. Walker always has a Starbucks cup in his hand while rocking a full-blown disheveled look complete with the corners of a plaid shirt crookedly sticking out the bottom of a thrown-over black parka. Hardy looks exhausted as Walker with a harsh five o’clock shadow that is leaning on becoming a full beard.

The “demons in hockey masks” sequence that ignites the film’s main storyline features a moment for Patrick Walker that is borrowed directly from Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. As Walker arrives at the scene of the crime, he closes his eyes and begins piecing everything together in his mind. 

The masked men with assault rifles point their guns over Walker’s shoulder as everyone in Tsui’s hideout is torn apart by a relentless barrage of bullets in slow motion. Walker has become accustomed to rearranging a pile of blood and corpses into something somewhat tangible.  

Most of the blood in the film is CGI too, which is disappointing but it also results in some violently worthwhile visuals. Some poor man’s face is blasted all over the camera by a shotgun, which is probably much more difficult to do with practical effects.

Havoc is weird because it offers a lot of what Gareth Evans is known for like messy and memorable action sequences (the entirety of the fast-paced club and cabin sequences), but it feels a bit different because of Evans's choice to lean into CGI more than he ever has. But even with that in mind, Havoc will end up being one of the best action movies of the year.

Tom Hardy and Gareth Evans break down brutal fight scene from Havoc - Shot by Shot

Official Trailer

Official Teaser

Havoc( 2025)

No law. Only disorder.

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A review by MovieGuys

Written by MovieGuys on Sat Apr 26 2025

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