The first reactions have landed for Tom Hardy's new Netflix action thriller Havoc.
The Gareth Evans (Gangs of London) movie sees the Venom actor play a bruised detective who must rescue a politician's son after a drug deal gone awry, all while uncovering corruption and conspiracies.
Following the film's premiere in London last night, early reactions from critics have emerged – and they've so far been glowing, with particular praise going towards the action.
"Gareth Evans is back showing everybody how action should be done in the insanely violent Havoc, coming to Netflix next Friday," wrote Digital Spy's Ian Sandwell on X.
"There's one particular club sequence that I cannot stop rewatching, marvelling at the technical audacity of it all. Terrific fun."
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Letterboxd's Mitchell Beaupre said on Bluesky that Evans returns "to feature filmmaking in ferocious form", calling Havoc "a relentlessly brutal neo-noir punctuated by two of the best action sequences of the decade".
"It’ll put a lump in your throat and then drop kick it out. Tom Hardy is on fire. Timothy Olyphant as silky smooth as ever. A banger."
The Globe and Mail's Barry Hertz suggested the four years it took to get to Netflix were "worth it", adding on X: "This is a squib-heavy bloodbath that's mythic, messy, manic. Missing THE RAID 2's Mad Dog flavor (and that film's enjoyably dense gangland-war narrative), but when it rips, it rips so hard."
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Critic Zachary Lee added: "Gareth Evans & Tom Hardy show that we’ve only nicked the surface when it comes to depicting on-screen death. Muscular filmmaking at its finest, it’s relentlessly bleak but there’s a twisted catharsis in seeing how it crescendos in brutality. Best night club fight in ages."
Alongside Hardy, Havoc has a stacked cast that also includes Olyphant, Jessie Mei Li, Forest Whitaker, Justin Cornwell, Quelin Sepulveda, Luis Guzmán, Michelle Waterson, Sunny Pang, Jim Caesar, Xelia Mendes-Jones and Yeo Yann Yann.
Evans previously described the film as his "love letter to the heroic bloodshed genre [and] the films that came out of Hong Kong in the '80s and '90s".
Havoc is released on Netflix on 25 April.
Sam is a freelance reporter and sub-editor who has a particular interest in movies, TV and music. After completing a journalism Masters at City University, London, Sam joined Digital Spy as a reporter, and has also freelanced for publications such as NME and Screen International. Sam, who also has a degree in Film, can wax lyrical about everything from Lord of the Rings to Love Is Blind, and is equally in his element crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i' as a sub-editor.
