I watch all genres of movies, but action movies have a special place in my heart, so when I see a good action movie, it catapults my heart. The last great action movie I watched was The Shadow Stray, which was brutally good. After watching many sloppy action movies, a Tom Hardy-led action movie was all I needed to deepen my interest in action movies.
Havoc is a good action movie that reeks of all the action havoc any good action movie can have. The plot structure of Havoc is not the usual one because it bears a handful of plot twists that have not been explored in Hollywood. However, the plot structure is quite limiting and does not allow it to tell its story in detail.
Tom Hardy came into Havoc with a remnant of his role in Venom, a bit disoriented, jittery, and weird-looking cop in this sense. But this disoriented guy has loads of coordinated fight moves on his sleeves. We were ushered into the movie by a mesmerizing prologue. In Patrick’s (Tom Hardy) ragged voice, he talks about melancholic themes, accompanied by fragments of scenes we cannot put together at that moment.
ALSO READ
Havoc might have set us in a cinematic mode
The first scene proper is a usual car chase, which gives us a bit of 6 Underground’s opening screen vibes, only that this time, the culprits are in a truck, not a Lamborghini. There is no shooting, just a mere car chase with subtle crashes on the cop’s end. Nothing prepares us for the act that the culprits had to pull to get the cops off their track.
The movie sets us in game mode for some scenes, giving us an immersive cinematic feel as we witness the action. At some point, it feels like you are watching yourself play Call of Duty. The cinematography of the movie is an A+.
Havoc could have been better with an expounded plot
Digging deep into the plot, the movie centers on an incident at an Apple Store. However, the plot only scratched the surface and did not provide an in-depth analysis of the featured events. Although flashbacks and conversations were used to explain the events leading up to the main story but they did not fully develop the plot. For example, Patrick’s family life was glossed over; the reason why he and his colleagues were in a drug warehouse was presented as a brief flashback with subtle details, as were Charlie and Mia’s relationship and other scenes.
Another aspect that earned the movie an A+ is its characterization. Each actor embodied their role with such grace. However, the character of Charlie, played by Justin Cornwell, was not given full expression, despite being the catalyst for the central conflict. His estranged relationship with his father is only decipherable through the father’s conversation with Patrick. Their family dynamic is muddled, presented through convoluted conversations that require piecing together.
I am not being racist to say this, but when you see Asians in an American movie, there is about to be a blindless, merciless bloodbath. The gunfight in the movie was based on a blind notion, which you can feel from the bloodbath. The motif of a drug lord trying to seek revenge for their dead relative always leads to a messy fight.
Scrutinizing Havoc, it surpasses expectations in everything, raising the cinematic standards of action movies. While its plot structure might not be as complex as thought, it gets its flowers in some other criteria.
