While it took three years for the action film’s writer-director to get all the footage he needed, he calls the wait an ‘unusual gift’.
Havoc, the new action crime thriller from writer-director Gareth Evans (The Raid) and Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road), dropped on Netflix yesterday (25 April) and is already top of the streamer’s movie charts.
Hardy plays Walker in the film, 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).
For our money, Havoc is the best action movie of 2025 so far. Evans stages several bravura, minutes-long fight sequences where all the warring parties mentioned above descend upon each other, resulting in bullets flying and bones breaking.
But also, amidst all the violence, the writer-director and Hardy subtly set up a great emotional journey for Walker – something which pays off beautifully in the film’s closing moments.
JOE was lucky enough to talk to Evans and Hardy about their latest. You can read their comments about the action and Walker’s story arc right here.
But also during the interview, we asked the pair about the long road Havoc had to get to the screen.
According to reports, the movie’s initial shoot occurred between July 2021 and October of that same year.
However, as is often the case with Hollywood productions, reshoots were needed. These ended up being delayed on account of scheduling issues and the Hollywood strikes of 2023.
As such, Havoc only completed additional photography in July 2024, three years after it began production.
JOE pointed out to Evans and Hardy that the delay seemed to have worked out for the best, given the quality of the end result.
But, we also asked the pair if they were ever frustrated having to wait to finish the film or if they were ever worried it might not get over the finish line.
In response, Evans told us: “No, I mean the frustration was only knowing that we had something great and couldn’t wait to start sharing it with people. But all we ever had was complete support from Netflix.
“There was never a fear of: ‘Oh! Is it going to disappear? Is it going to go away?’ We’d seen stories of other studios maybe and other projects that did fall by the wayside. But no. [We] never had anything other than belief in the project from the studio.”
And Evans confirmed that the wait wound up being beneficial to Havoc. Laughing, he explained: “It was an unusual amount of time for us all to be kind of waiting to get it done. I was on standby for about two years.
“But I got to sit and hone the material in the meanwhile and start to be more pointed about the things that we wanted to address.
“So having that kind of luxury to be able to sit with a film and pick away at it and try little things and experiment with structure and things like that, it was an unusual gift in a way.
“And thankfully, when we did finally get to do the pickups, everyone looked the same. That was great as well, because it was a fair old chunk of time that had passed since then.
“It was a real healthy process to be able to do it like this.”
Havoc is streaming on Netflix now.
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