Tom Hardy fans have had to be patient waiting for Havoc, which was announced in 2021 with filming taking place that year. Reshoots were then delayed by both scheduling issues and the Hollywood strikes of 2023, before finally being completed last summer.
The long delay led to some worrying that we'd never get to see the action thriller or if there was some other reason it was delayed. But fear not, Havoc finally lands on Netflix tomorrow – and it's exactly the movie you wanted to see.
Havoc follows weary detective Walker (Hardy) who, after a drug deal goes wrong, finds himself having to stay one step ahead of a vengeful crime syndicate and his fellow cops to rescue a crooked politician's son Charlie (Justin Cornwell) and his partner Mia (Quelin Sepulveda).
They might have been involved in the drug deal, but as Walker digs further, he unravels a deep web of corruption which forces him to confront the demons of his past. Walker just has to stay alive long enough to do it.
In order to do that, Walker has to fight a lot of people. And we're not exaggerating when we say a lot.
After a brief opening tease of a murky incident in Walker's past that will definitely be relevant later, Havoc throws us straight into the action with an intense truck chase as somebody clings on for dear life to a swinging back door of the truck.
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If you didn't know the previous work of Havoc writer/director Gareth Evans, then this might seem a bit over-the-top. But really, this is just par for the course.
Evans made his name with the astonishing 2011 action thriller The Raid, and cemented his status as one of the best action directors around with its epic sequel The Raid 2 and the first season of Gangs of London. After a brief detour to folk horror in Netflix's Apostle, Havoc sees Evans back on familiar turf and it's like he never left.
It might only be April, but a five-minute club sequence that comes at Havoc's midway point will be hard to top this year. Full of visual flair, brutal choreography and a healthy splash of blood, it's an action tour de force that you'll want to have watched on the big screen. It loses none of its brilliance on the small screen though.
Evans tries his best to outdo his own achievement though with an outrageously bloody finale. It's more bullet-ridden than the club sequence, yet still finds the scope for punishing one-on-one battles, including one capped with a memorable harpoon kill.
They're both five-star action sequences in a movie where the plot doesn't quite live up to the action. There's little you won't have seen before in Havoc's 'troubled detective aims for redemption' arc, but Tom Hardy's intense performance sells it well and keeps you invested so that you're not just waiting until the next set piece.
Havoc doesn't even really give you the time to wait for the next set piece anyway, throwing you in at the deep end. It will likely take you a little while to get to grips with the world Evans has crafted, but once that drug deal has gone wrong, the movie settles and finds its rhythm.
You might wish for more depth from supporting characters like Jessie Mei Li's rookie Ellie, yet it's also probably not what you've come to Havoc for. You're more likely to want to see Hardy beating up bad guys and Evans gives you that in abundance, and often in insanely violent ways.
Good luck to any other action movie released this year as it's a strong possibility that Havoc has already delivered the best action sequences of 2025.
Havoc is released on Netflix on 25 April.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
