Movie Review: Havoc (2025)

Genre: Action Thriller  

Director: Gareth Evans  

Starring: Tom Hardy, Forest Whitaker, Luis Guzman, Timothy Olyphant  

Running Time: 107 minutes  

Synopsis: Corrupt cop Walker (Tom Hardy) investigates a massacre at the drug den of master criminal Tsui. Prime suspects and drug thieves Charlie (Justin Cronwell) and Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) are on the run, although Walker concludes they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Charlie is the son of real estate tycoon and mayoral candidate Lawrence (Forest Whitaker), who pays Walker to make scandals go away. With inexperienced cop Ellie (Jessica Mei Li) as his only ally, Walker has to find Charlie and Mia and keep them safe from a group of violent corrupt cops led by Vincent (Timothy Olyphant), and an army of goons assembled by Tsui's vengeful mother.

What Works Well: This is an over-the-top, wildly entertaining action thriller. In extended and often chaotic scenes of balletic violence, countless bullets fly, gallons of blood spurt from gaping wounds, and hordes of bad guys (and girls) are mowed down in cartoonish but artistic displays of excess. Director and writer Gareth Evans squeezes into less than two hours a complicated pursuit story with a rich set of characters but hardly any good people, just shades of bad ranging from dubious to despicable. Tom Hardy's Walker looks (and probably smells like) snail excrement, and yet he's the best hope to save the few souls worth salvaging.

What Does Not Work As Well: This is unrestrained narrative terrain devoid of most logic or common sense, and all the violence is ultimately numbing.

Key Quote:

Walker (narrating): You live in this world, you make choices. Choices you try to justify. For yourself, for your family. And for a while it works. Until it doesn't. Until you make a choice that renders everything worthless.

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Movie Review: The Drop (2014)

A crime drama, The Drop is intense, character-rich and gracefully slow-burning.

Bob (Tom Hardy) is the quiet bartender at the Brooklyn bar owned by his cousin Marv (James Gandolfini). The bar is used as the occasional illegal cash drop point for pickup by local mobsters. Years prior Marv ran his own racket, but was outmuscled by a Chechen gang and now operates the bar on their behalf while quietly seething. The joint is also known as the last place Richie Whelan was spotted before he disappeared forever, ten years ago.

Bob rescues an abused dog from the front yard of the house where Nadia (Noomi Rapace) lives. He adopts the animal and names it Rocco, and she helps him look after it. But Bob's subdued life starts to unravel when the bar is held up, infuriating the Chechens and attracting the attention of Detective Torres (John Ortiz). Then local thug Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts) shows up, claiming Rocco is his dog, and also hinting he murdered Richie.

Directed by Michaël R. Roskam and written by Dennis Lehane adapting his own short story, The Drop is an engrossing experience. Focused tightly on people rather than events, this is a taut and dark detour into the land of crime in grimy Brooklyn neighbourhoods. Every character has something to hide and an angle on the next move, and it's always just a bit crooked. Each mess is planned to be mopped up without attracting undue police intervention, and anyway, in this world crooks tangle with crooks and the public could care less.

Roskam constructs the quadrangle of Bob, Marv, Nadia and Eric with deliberate care. The characters are provided the necessary time and depth to develop, and the bonds between them emerge in multiple and often unexpected dimensions. Lehane has many surprises in store, and first impressions about almost everything await inevitable challenges as layers of prior history, deceit and desperation are slowly revealed.

The film builds tension without any respite. The Drop has no room for interludes of humour, romance or distraction. Even when Cousin Marv's Bar is filled with Super Bowl revellers the pressure is building with stuffed envelopes discreetly changing hands, glares and glances across the room, and devious minds working overtime to outmanoeuvre each other.

The superlative cast is excellent, with Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini (in his final film, posthumously released) perfect as the reticent and gruff odd couple jointly navigating each night's new surprises. Noomi Rapace provides Nadia with a suitably moody and suspicious disposition, while Matthias Schoenaerts is shifty and unnerving as the vaguely unhinged Eric.

The Drop builds to a brilliantly subdued bang, criminal scores efficiently settled in a crime-controlled bar, everything cleaned up by the time the morning crowd filters in.

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Movie Review: Dunkirk (2017)

A stellar World War Two film, Dunkirk is the story of an army's survival, defeat salvaged from the jaws of catastrophe as seen through the eyes of the combatants.

Three separate but convergent stories related to the evacuation of the defeated British Army at Dunkirk, France in 1940 are recounted simultaneously. In the first story young British Army Private Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) barely survives patrol duties in the town and flees to the beach where he tries to find his way onto an evacuation ship. But with the beaches under fire from German guns and aircraft, the injured are being evacuated first. Over the course of a week Tommy teams up with Gibson (Aneurin Barnard), a soldier of few words. They rescue fellow soldier Alex (Harry Styles) from death by crushing and then attempt to smuggle themselves on-board any available outbound vessel.

The second story takes place over one day and features civilian Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his teenaged son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) responding to the British Navy's call for assistance. Without waiting for official help they set sail from England in Dawson's small boat with their eager helper George (Barry Keoghan). The Dawsons soon pluck a shell-shocked mariner out of the water, and doggedly continue on their way towards the hell of the Dunkirk beaches.

The final story takes place over one hour, and centers on Farrier (Tom Hardy), one of three Royal Air Force pilots flying towards the skies over Dunkirk to provide what support they can and counter the German air threat. Farrier engages in dogfights with Luftwaffe fighters and attempts to shoot down bombers targeting evacuation ships. Gradually Farrier becomes increasingly isolated and low on fuel.

Meanwhile, the Navy's Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) is doing his best to organize an orderly withdrawal of more than 300,000 men in the face of hostile seas and incessant enemy pressure.

Written, directed and co-produced by Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk is a beautifully overwhelming and all-encompassing multi-sensory experience. Eschewing traditional narrative structures in favour of telling a story with barely any dialogue, no defined heroes and no venomous villains, Nolan allows the evacuation itself to take centre stage as a seminal event and pursues it from the land, the sea and the air.

Whereas Saving Private Ryan was about the ethos of a generation, Fury delved into the limits of sacrifice and Hacksaw Ridge focused on one individual's private war against war, Dunkirk is about a nation's psyche. As such Nolan is less interested in the mechanics of battle or individual actions; rather this is a film about collective character being forged through the mist of a stunned and stunning reaction to a devastating retreat.

Each of the three stories generates specific momentum and unrelenting tension. The fear, frustration, hunger and desperation of the massed soldiers builds up in the eyes of Tommy, Gibson, Alex and others, willing to try anything to get on a boat, despite the danger of being blown out of the water by the marauding German bombers. The stoic response of the civilian population is represented by Mr. Dawson and his son Peter, and their chapter most embodies the spirit of Dunkirk as a country comes together to rescue its sons. Meanwhile the dogfights and aerial duels in the sky are superbly choreographed, the pilot Farrier aware that his contribution can only be small but yet decisive in terms of morale and for the lives he may save.

To augment the impressive vistas of a gloomy beachfront war theatre, Hans Zimmer provides a soundtrack that is simultaneously filled with dread, anticipation and extreme anxiety, adding to jarringly loud sound effects that bring the horrors of war to the fore. Every bullet in Dunkirk registers as a transmittal of potential death, every bomb and torpedo an individual parcel of destruction. The few lines of dialogue suffer in comparison and are often drowned out or garbled.

In the absence of a focus on individuals, Nolan's cast is filled with newcomers and relative unknowns in most of the key roles. Mark Rylance as Mr. Dawson, Kenneth Branagh as the pier master Commander Bolton and Tom Hardy as the pilot Farrier share the most prominent acts of above-and-beyond valour. On the beach, the widescreen is filled with thousands of startled young men maintaining relative calm and some discipline in the face of enemy fire as they patiently await either rescue or death.

Dunkirk is war in its unspoken complexity, death, hope, bravery and astonishing selflessness coming together to define a nation and write a momentous chapter in a history-defining conflict.

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Movie Review: Black Hawk Down (2001)

Based on real events, Black Hawk Down is a stellar war movie. The depiction of the Battle of Mogadishu is a stirring story of a mission gone wrong, and the men who had to subsequently rescue each other and limit the damage.

It's October 1993, and US forces including Army Rangers and elite Delta Force troops are stationed in Mogadishu, Somalia. Initially deployed on a famine relief mission, the US military is getting embroiled in a local civil war among squabbling warlords who do not hesitate to use starvation as a weapon. Powerful militia leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid is designated as the worst of the bad guys. Delta Force operators do capture arms dealer Osman Ali Atto (George Harris), but are no closer to shutting down Aidid's operation.

Based on sketchy intelligence, Major William Garrison (Sam Shepard) hurriedly cobbles together a mission to try and capture Aidid and his top aides while they meet at a safe house. American troops backed by helicopters leave the safety of their airport headquarters and delve into the dense Aidid stronghold of Bakaara Market within the labyrinthine confines of Mogadishu. Intended to last less than an hour, everything that can go wrong on the mission does go wrong, with thousands of militiamen taking up arms against the small American extraction team and shooting down two Black Hawk helicopters. The American forces get caught in a nightlong quagmire, incurring heavy losses while they try to rescue fallen soldiers and escape from a city filled with countless enemies.

Directed by Ridley Scott and based on the best-selling book by Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down is an exhilarating war movie. After a slowish start to establish the premise, the film explodes into an unrelenting two hours of non-stop intensity as the battle is covered from several angles. As far as representing the grim agony of street warfare in third world cities against overwhelming opposing forces, the film stands a class apart. Scott and cinematographer Sławomir Idziak capture the chaos, confusion and danger-around-every-corner that characterizes modern urban warfare.

Soldiers are separated from each other, seemingly straightforward tasks like getting to the crash sites and rescuing the pilots turn into cascading disasters, with the rescuers needing rescue. Every block is a battleground, every window, doorway and rooftop a source of danger. Soldiers perform impromptu surgery, while others push ahead despite wounds and exposure to comrades killed under horrific circumstances. The film rams home both the insanity of war and the courage of the men who make it their profession.

Black Hawk Down does get a few things wrong. The Somalis are all faceless hordes, the definition of a blood thirsty enemy presented with no context. Back in the early 1950s Hollywood started to humanize natives in Westerns and then Germans in World War II movies. To produce a 2001 film without a modicum of perspective on what the other side is willing to die for is quite myopic.

Also relatively poor is the lack of distinction among the American fighting men. Josh Harnett, Tom Sizemore and Eric Bana emerge as individuals due to defined character traits, but the rest of the men are effectively interchangeable, and once bulked up in equipment and helmets, they all look the same. The large cast includes Orlando Bloom, Ewan McGregor, Tom Hardy, Jeremy Piven and William Fichtner.

But the objective of the film is to celebrate the armed forces, and to snatch a moral victory out of an astounding defeat which carried huge local tactical and overall strategic resonance. After the Mogadishu humiliation the US was seen as weak, defeatable, and quick to cut and run. But at the level of the fighting men, Black Hawk Down does reinforce the one-for-all and all-for-one ethos of the military, the heroic sacrifices, and no-man-left-behind principles. Against overwhelming odds the street battles feature countless examples of men risking their lives to help others, a band of brothers mentality that turns individuals into an army.

Loud, severe and imperfect, Black Hawk Down passionately captures the ugly realities of war as waged in hostile cities.

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Movie Review: The Revenant (2015)

An epic story of survival in the wilderness, The Revenant is a stunningly beautiful western exploring the limits of human endurance against a backdrop of frontier barbarism.

It's 1823, and a scrappy team of fur trappers deep in the barely explored territories of the northern Louisiana Purchase is attacked and mostly slaughtered by natives. A small group of trappers escapes the massacre, including experienced hunter Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), his half-native son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), the greedy and selfish John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), young trapper Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), and Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), the leader of the party.

Glass is inspired by visions and memories of his deceased wife (Grace Dove), and starts to guide the party overland towards Fort Kiowa. But Fitzgerald, who is living with the scars of being partially scalped by natives, challenges his leadership at every step. Meanwhile, a native chief and his men are searching in the same area for Powaqa, a native woman kidnapped by a party of French explorers.

While out scouting ahead of his group, Glass is attacked and badly mauled by a grizzly bear and scarcely hangs on to life. Henry leaves him in the care of Fitzgerald, Hawk and Bridger, who promise to give him a decent burial once he expires. But Fitzgerald had ideas of his own, and Glass is abandoned in the wilderness, badly hurt but very much alive. He embarks on a long journey back to a semblance of civilization, his determination to stay alive despite the harsh elements fuelled by a burning desire to seek revenge.

The Revenant is a grim, ferocious western, a story of individual survival in an untamed land. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and running for a surprisingly swift 156 minutes with relatively little dialogue, the film is a feast for the eyes and a challenge for the mind, offering a raw beauty but also unrelenting and almost physically exhausting to watch. For the men carving a path in uncharted territories, every step is a struggle, and every encounter with man, beast or nature a potentially existential battle.

Loosely inspired by the real adventures of fur trapper Hugh Glass, the story is a deglamourized view of how the west was explored. Men expire suddenly and sometimes in large numbers, and the deaths are often gruesome, bodies left behind with no semblance of dignity. Encounters with natives are mostly wordless. Sometimes a common humanity is found; more often killing comes first, followed by a startling absence of emotion. And nature still dominates, whether through a blanket of uncompromising winter eager to consume men's feeble attempts to exploit the land, or with wild animals stomping their turf and blithely dismissing human competition.

Filmed in British Columbia and Alberta, The Revenant is visually stunning. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki capture imposing vistas of winter in the wild, for the most part ignoring CGI and embracing the harsh reality of the frontier. The actors and crew famously battled deep-freeze temperatures and filming was limited to one hour at dusk, infusing the film with sunset hues and a genuine sense of end-of-the-day cold exhaustion. Lubezki's cameras are just as impressive in close-up shots, with plenty of point-of-view perspectives and fluid movements circling the characters as they confront the unforgiving landscape.

Leonardo DiCaprio dominates the film with a dedicated performance filled with passion and intensity. His version of Hugh Glass is a man of few words but plenty of resources and an unrivalled devotion to survival. The rest of the cast members are often difficult to differentiate, buried beneath layers of grey rags, bushy beards and thick accents.

The Revenant's main theme is life and death walking close together. For the trappers, explorers and natives, nature offers life and demands death in return. Glass' encounter with the bear pushes him into the clutches of annihilation, but the film treats existence as a binary condition, either alive or not, and with Glass life persists. Enraged by a sense of injustice and equipped with exceptional survivalist skills, he will have another, almost metaphorical encounter with an animal, this time simulating a full rebirth.

Glass works his way back to an approximation of functional health and achieves dominion over life and death, this time with the power to decide whether man or nature get the final say. The fragile journey of a father and husband from near extinction to mastery over man's fate is the story of humanity, where savagery and compassion compete for the evolutionary space within.

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Movie Review: Lawless (2012)

A prohibition-era action drama based on real events, Lawless mixes violence with family bonds and local skirmishes for control of the illicit alcohol trade. As three brothers from rural Virginia face off against big city criminals, there are plenty of predicable elements but also some snazzy moments of excitement.

It's 1931, and brothers Forrest, Howard and Jack Bondurant (Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke and Shia LaBeouf) are among the more successful families independently manufacturing and distributing alcohol in rural Franklin County, Virginia. Forrest is the brains, Howard the muscle, and the youngest Jack is the driver, considered by Forrest to be not-yet-ready for the serious business of intimidation and deal-making. The brothers operate under a mythology of invincibility, partially justified by Forrest's war-time adventures. The local sheriffs are friendly and kept under control with a regular supply of booze.

Maggie (Jessica Chastain), a dancer escaping from the chaos of Chicago, offers her waitressing services to the Bondurants and initiates an across-the-room relationship with Forrest. Meanwhile, Jack starts to romantically pursue Bertha (Mia Wasikowaska), the local reverend's daughter. With plenty of money to be made in the illegal alcohol trade, the big-time gangsters move into the Bondurant's turf. Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) is sent in to do the dirty work of bringing the ragtag moonshiners under the control of Chicago mobsters. Forrest is the only producer who resists, leading to increasing levels of violence as Rakes tightens the noose of intimidation and Forrest lashes back.

Lawless is based on true events as described in the book The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant, Jack's grandson. Director John Hillcoat aims for a Bonnie And Clyde type vibe, with the Bondurants as 1930s outlaws to cheer for because they are likable rogues and everyone else is as bad or even more corrupt. To a certain extent the film succeeds as a romp on the backroads of the moonshine industry, with some wild but at least somewhat true episodes of throat slitting, broad daylight street gun battles, and ingeniously hidden distilleries pumping out unfathomable amounts of alcohol.

Fun as the adventures are, the film is also lacking in the necessary charm. Forrest is the closest Hillcoat comes to finding a compelling character, with Tom Hardy delivering an entertainingly gruff and mumble-filled performance. But about half way through the film his presence is sidelined for a long stretch, and the narrative momentum suffers.

The story is predominantly told through Jack's eyes, the least interesting of the brothers, and his moments of growth and development are both few and jarring when they happen. Jack's rather prolonged pursuit of Bertha fails to ignite.  Also disappointing is an underdeveloped role for Jessica Chastain as Maggie. She gets one good scene of proactive yet sensitive seduction, but otherwise settles firmly into the background.

What the protagonists may lack in flair, Special Deputy Charlie Rakes more than makes up for in over-the-top despicable smarm. Guy Pearce does not hold back in creating an easy-to-hate villain, from the ridiculous hair to the city slicker clothes and sniffy condescending attitude. The clash between Forrest and Rakes is a spicy collision between idealized rural honesty and exaggerated urbanite arrogance. Also adding some edge is Gary Oldman, who makes a couple of relatively brief but effective appearances as Floyd Banner, another well-financed gangster muscling in on the alcohol business.

The backdrops are provided by Benoît Delhomme's cinematography, and he creates a landscape only marginally disturbed by human settlement. Mountainous rural Virginia of the 1930s is a bleak, gray place, a comfortable home for the locals but relatively foreboding to outsiders, a perfect base from which an illegal industry can thrive.

Lawless achieves and maintains a middling level of engagement. Much like the moonshine itself, the quality varies by the batch but the underlying buzz is always there.

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The Movies Of Tom Hardy

All movies starring Tom Hardy and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Black Hawk Down (2001)

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Inception (2010)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Lawless (2012)

The Drop (2014)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The Revenant (2015)

Dunkirk (2017)

Havoc (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Mad Max:Fury Road (2015)

A franchise reboot roaring down the desert wastelands a full 36 years after the original, Mad Max: Fury Road sticks close to the series ethos while introducing a new heroine and delivering the wildest possible ride.

In a future devastated by war, Max (Tom Hardy) is captured by the War Boys and held as a prisoner and a "blood bag" at the Citadel, ruled by the demoniacal Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Joe and his sons control the masses by limiting their access to fresh water, and controlling the import of fuel from nearby Gas Town. Furiosa (Charlize Theron) is the designated driver of the armored war rig dispatched to bring in the latest shipment of gas. On this trip she has an agenda of her own, leading her small convoy off course and into the desert.

Furiosa has freed Joe's five slave wives, stashed them in the war rig, and plans to take them to a "Green Place" that she remembers from her childhood. Her attempted escape sparks a chase by Joe's army of men and vehicles, including the dedicated young War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult), tied to his blood bag Max. Joe wants his wives back, Nux is intent on dying in the service of Joe, Max just wants to live through the ordeal, and Furiosa is seeking redemption by freeing the women she had previously helped to subjugate. Max and Furiosa eventually join forces to face the dangers of sand storms, marauders and an unforgiving desert in a chase through desolate terrain.

Directed, co-produced and co-written by original series creator George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road is two hours of roaring engines, imaginative machinery, post-apocalyptic maniacs, high speed carnage, ridiculous outfits, unbelievable but real stunts, and outrageous destruction. And it's all delivered with loving beauty, a symphony of annihilation where every note contributes to the artistic devastation.

Once the chase begins early in the movie, there is barely any respite. The pauses between grand motorized confrontations are brief, and are mainly there to allow John Seale's cinematography and the Junkie XL music to bring to life the next astonishing tableau in a destroyed world. The seemingly barren desert is filled with the expected sand dunes and mammoth sandstorms, but also surprises ranging from elegant rock formations to hostile swamps. These serve up a variety of scenic obstacle courses to mix-up the succession of skirmishes between Joe's army and Furiosa's small group of escapees.

Most of the stunts are real, Miller only rarely resorting to CGI, and the madness of the physical execution is evident on the screen. Miller also makes sure to drop in a not insubstantial amount of mean humour amidst all the violence, with the chain connecting Max and Nux used a great prop to complicate the early battle skirmishes. Within Immortan Joe's army vehicles, a tireless heavy metal guitarist and a troop of drummers provide an insanely funny soundtrack of death.

In the few context-setting scenes and even fewer lines of dialogue, the premise is sketched in with sufficient details to bring the story to life. The Citadel is an old fashioned dictatorship with an unhinged ruler who wields control by manipulating natural resources, while lining up his sons as his successors. Immortan Joe has a harem and slaves at his disposal, and is worshipped as a deity. His pale faced War Boys seek death in battle as their most glorious contribution to their ruler. In short, Miller looks at the future and finds a simple extrapolation of the past and the present.

Furiosa was born in the Green Place but was captured at a young age and grew up at the Citadel, and now carries the weight of guilt for having helped Joe consolidate his power. Somewhere along the line, she also lost an arm, but that would never slow her down. Max, meanwhile, is still suffering living nightmares due to his past failures, and just wants to be alone. Mad Max: Fury Road is ultimately more about Furiosa than Max, and Charlize Theron carves out a performance full of grim determination, worthy of facing down the worst that the dystopian future can throw at her.

A crazily ambitious project, Mad Max: Fury Road ranks among the grandest, most thrilling vehicular mayhem movies of all time.

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