At first, “Havoc” sounds like just another one of those generic, one-word titles Hollywood slaps on action movies to convey a terse, efficient shoot-’em-up. Why give such projects a long-winded name like “A Clear and Present Danger” or “Every Which Way but Loose” when you can find something punchy like “Taken,” “Crank” or “Drive”? Look it up in the dictionary, however, and “havoc” doesn’t simply mean “devastation” (of which there is plenty in “The Raid” director Gareth Evans’ excessively violent Netflix outing), but also some mix of confusion, mayhem and all-around disorder (which spoils whatever fun a couple over-the-top set-pieces deliver).

Looking worse for wear than Bruce Willis’ tank top at the end of “Die Hard,” Tom Hardy fully commits to the walking stereotype that is Walker, the least bad cop working Christmas Eve in a city that a) doesn’t exist, b) seems to be modeled on the scuzzy version of Gotham City seen in “The Penguin” and c) boasts a triad-run underworld populated by an inexhaustible supply of heavily armed henchmen.

According to splintered flashbacks scattered throughout the plot like shrapnel, Walker belongs to a tight, thoroughly corrupt gang of narcotics officers (where the most bad is embodied by Timothy Olyphant) who’ve decided to rip off a whole lot of dope from the people they should be arresting. Walker’s captain recognizes him as a rule-breaker, as does real estate mogul-cum-mayoral candidate Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), who has Walker to thank for single-handedly saving his political career.
So far, it’s all straight from the Shane Black playbook, including cynical repartee with rookie partner Ellie (Jessie Mei Li) and the scene where Walker scours a filthy convenience store looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for his 6-year-old daughter (inexplicably seen playing with a handgun a few seconds shy of the 10-minute mark). While Walker is so distracted, a high-speed chase involving the other four cops in on his dirty-money scheme is unfolding across town.
A semitrailer full of washing machines (which are in turn full of cocaine) is racing toward the freeway — except, none of this looks real. Some guy swings from the rear door of the trailer, but it’s quite obviously the camera that’s moving, not the vehicle, in the movie’s unconvincingly rendered metropolis. These are basically the same VFX tricks the Wachowskis used in “Speed Racer,” except that movie was meant to suggest the live-action equivalent of anime. “Havoc” looks cartoonish on accident.

You’ve heard of organized crime? Now imagine the exact opposite: a clichéd and highly disorganized crime movie in which Evans — who can direct the hell out of an action scene, but struggles with anything remotely dramatic — lards a simple-minded mission to protect Beaumont’s son Charlie (Justin Cornwell) with a wildly complicated conspiracy. Evans’ convoluted script keeps us guessing for a while as to who is trying to kill Charlie and his three accomplices (yes, the son of the city’s leading mayoral candidate was the one stealing washers), but only because there’s not enough information at this point to make sense of the plot. Havoc, indeed.
Early action scenes are told in strangely oblique ways, with gunfire erupting off-screen (but little carnage shown) or else via abrupt cuts, filled in later by ultra-violent flashbacks. That’s true of Walker’s opening crisis of conscience, as well as a heavy-artillery heist on the local Chinese drug dealer (Jeremy Ang Jones), just as Charlie and pals are delivering their haul. When Evans does circle around to showing the shootout, it looks like a scene from such Hong Kong classics as “Hard Boiled” or “The Killer,” in which well-dressed Asian extras go cartwheeling in slow motion as squibs explode up and down their dress shirts. (So many practical blood packs make for a nostalgic touch in a movie that otherwise relies rather heavily on CGI.)
Because Charlie and his girlfriend, Mia (Quelin Sepulveda, who would have made a better main character than Walker, with her punkish, young Franka Potente vibe), were present when the raid went down, triad superboss “Little Sister” (Yeo Yann Yann) shows up with a private army. If you can make it 50 minutes into the movie, you’ll be rewarded with a nightclub scene in which Walker, the dirty cops and Little Sister’s platoon converge on Charlie and Mia, while Gesaffelstein thunders on the soundtrack.
That would have been a “cool” music choice 12 years ago, when his “Aleph” album dropped, but playing three tracks back-to-back-to-back during the 10-minute club sequence so soon after the arrival of Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem” (featuring four Gesaffelstein collaborations) feels late to the party. In any case, it’s the right music for a Gareth Evans spectacular, matching Aria Prayogi’s dark, industrial-sounding score, but a weird fit for the neon-lit venue or the scene’s laid-back DJ, all of which belong to somewhere frat boys and Kardashians hang out, not the final resting place for 50 or so thugs with incredibly bad aim.

For action fans, the club scene will be reason enough to watch, as Evans orchestrates a kinetic bloodbath using split levels and a gnarly mix of machine guns, martial arts and assorted improvised weapons (including steel pipes and butcher knives). “Kill Bill” it ain’t, though the melee is certainly reminiscent of “The Raid.”
Twenty minutes later, the climax at Walker’s personal cabin feels excessive at best, but mostly just exhausting, as the surviving hundred or so characters are winnowed down to a number you could count on one hand. The cheesy screenplay, shallow characters and wince-worthy acting (from all but A-listers Hardy, Whitaker and Olyphant) suggest that Evans might be better suited to specializing in the second unit or action sequences on a major franchise, rather than writing and directing a quasi-dramatic feature.
There’s a reason big-studio producers looked to Sundance darlings like Colin Trevorrow, Rian Johnson and Jon Watts to handle their tentpoles: not because those guys are great at action, but because they keep the interpersonal dynamics interesting. That’s precisely where Evans wreaks the most havoc, ignoring (or simply not understanding) what connects us to such characters in the first place — and therefore ensuring that his unwieldy Netflix vehicle is dead on arrival.

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