JOE spoke to the film’s star Tom Hardy, as well as its writer and director.
This week, Netflix will be releasing Havoc – the new action crime thriller from writer-director Gareth Evans and star Tom Hardy.
Hardy plays Walker in the movie, a cop battling personal demons. In the wake of a drug deal gone wrong, the bruised detective becomes ensnared in a tangled, deadly criminal web involving vengeful Triads, a crooked politician (Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker) and a group of corrupt fellow cops (including Timothy Olyphant).
Without revealing too much, JOE will just say that the action in Havoc is extraordinary and jaw-dropping, with the film packed full of minutes-long bruising brawls and speeding bullets.
This is perhaps to be expected given Evans’ previous acclaimed credits, including The Raid movies and TV’s Gangs of London.
JOE spoke to the writer-director and his new star, Tom Hardy, about their latest action flick.
In particular, we were curious whether Hardy’s martial arts background (he has a purple belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu) helped him and Evans when it came to Havoc’s many fight scenes.
The actor had this surprising answer, responding laughing: “No, not at all, to be honest – [it] held us back. Thank you for asking anyway. I do love jiu jitsu [but there was] no position for it here.”
Evans added: “The design of the action was not to be like: ‘Oh hey, Tom’s got a jiu jitsu background so Walker’s gonna be a jiu jitsu expert.’
“It’s about finding choreography that fits his character. So, what would Walker do in a situation? So, instead of him doing armbars and chokes and things like that, it would be about…”
Tom then chimed in, excitedly: “Head-butts, biting, thumbs in eyeballs” with Evans following up: “Grabbing heads and putting them in places that are sharp and aggressive and things like that.”
Hardy summed up the fighting in Havoc as “ugg, quite ugg, brute”.
Despite the Netflix film working as a crazy action movie and a twisty crime thriller, it’s also a character study about a cop with a dark past stuck in purgatory.
And according to Evans, this part of the story became more fleshed out after conversations with Hardy.
The writer-director told JOE:
“In the early stages when we sent Tom the script, we got on quite a few FaceTime calls to discuss character and get under the hood more about who Walker was and what would make him tick, what all of his interpersonal relationships were with the people that he worked with or the people that he loved and to kind of really push and pull on that and unearth something deeper.
“In the process of that, we landed on – without giving spoilers away – sort of like a traumatic event that gave us an under current of what is haunting this guy as he’s on his journey, what is making him estranged from his family and what is the fallout of that one key event and and how does that paint the picture of his character going forward throughout the film.
“I think we both talked about the idea of it not being a sort of overwhelming redemption arc. It was more about a first step towards something and an acknowledgement of what he’s been avoiding for the last few years and how that’s eaten him up inside.
“So, yeah that came about through discussions with Tom early doors and then continued to evolve as we were working. We kept looking at the text and looking for places to reinforce the themes that were becoming more and more apparent as we were shooting as well.”
Havoc is out on Netflix on Friday, 25 April.
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