What’s it rated? TV-MA
When? 2025
Where’s it showing? Netflix
Writer-director Gavin Evans (The Raid: Redemption) directs this martial arts-filled, bullet-ridden, and car chase-rich crime thriller about Walker (Tom Hardy), a shady police detective whose personal life is in the shitter and whose professional life is hanging by thread. He’s corrupt but not as corrupt as some of his fellow officers, and he’s on the payroll of Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), a real estate tycoon and mayoral candidate of a gritty, fictional American city.
When Beaumont’s estranged son, Charlie (Justin Cornwell), and three other thieves boost a shipment of washing machines filled with a secret stash of cocaine, they try to make good by bringing the stash to the local Triad run by Tsui (Jeremy Ang Jones), but gunmen burst in, killing Tsui, who’s the son of Mother (Yeo Yann Yann), the head of the senior Triad. She wants revenge. On the run from narcotics cops led by Vincent (Timothy Oliphant) and two sets of Triad killers, Walker steps in to rescue Charlie.
It’s a bit slower getting started than I expected, but soon it’s bloody and bone crunching. Compared to the ballet-like action of the John Wick franchise, Havoc is a bit rough around the edges, just like its protagonist. (105 min.) Δ
This article appears in Best of SLO County 2025.