Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER

Writer-director Gareth Evans tells Jane Crowther how Tom Hardy is ‘smashing up the screen’ in his tale of an American cop having a very bad night in Havoc.

‘When I was doing the Raid films, it was my love letter to the Hong Kong martial arts genre through the lens of Silat, the Indonesian martial art,’ writer-director Gareth Evans tells Hollywood Authentic when recalling his calling card visceral breakout action movies. The Raid wowed at TIFF in 2011 and knocked audiences’ socks off with the inventive, kinetic and claustrophobic action contained in a single tower block. Evans went on to create 2014’s sequel and the bruising TV show, Gangs of London. His latest film shows a DNA thread through those projects but is an evolution. ‘Havoc is more like my love letter to Hong Kong artists in the manner of John Woo and Ringo Lam. It’s a lot more about gunplay, the stylisation and percussive elements of the action design and that heroic bloodshed genre that existed in the late ’80s and early ’90s in Hong Kong cinema, where it’s always rain-swept and neon lights and city life. And then in the middle of that, you have Tom Hardy just smashing up the screen…’

Hardy and he had been ‘circling each other’ hoping to work together when Evans sent the jiu-jitsu and boxing enthusiast actor the script, which tracks a detective, Walker, as he discovers crime and corruption, attempts to rescue a hostage and deals with attacks in numerous inventive scenarios. ‘That led to a series of really super-interesting, fascinating, educating FaceTime phone calls with Tom,’ Evans says of the actor, who also produced the movie. ‘From Tom’s perspective, it was about learning everything about Walker so that he could fully embody him as a character. That was a huge learning experience for me because suddenly I was being asked all these questions that maybe I hadn’t asked of this character. We did that intense breakdown of the character, what is it that kind of gets under the hood of this character? And then he went off to the gym and got himself in prime physical condition. As someone who doesn’t frequent the gym that often, I would just be exhausted seeing the effort that he would go through to get himself ready for the film.’ When Hardy turned up to filming in Wales, where Greg Williams shot these pictures, ‘it was like he was cut out of rock – he was full-on battle-ready’.

Hardy’s physicality and fighting know-how evolved the action designs that Evans conceived with his stunt coordinator, Jude Poyer, escalating the brutality of the scenarios as Walker is pushed to the limit. Evans has two favourite sequences of his latest physical carnage; one taking place in a nightclub with a glass floor – allowing for inventive, immersive camera angles – and one in a fishing shack complete with harpoons and hooks; ‘lots of sharp things and blunt instruments’. The nightclub scene is ‘this breakneck, fast, high-octane set-piece that just goes from floor to floor, and then spills out into the streets. It’s this breathless sequence to pulsating music that I’m really excited for audiences to get a chance to watch.’

The Raid had a sequel, so does Evans think he’s left enough room for a revisit to this new world? ‘Who knows?’ he laughs. ‘I’ve always planned it as a one-and-done as a movie, but there is definitely space there if there was enough demand.’ For now, he promises Hardy in what he calls ‘beast mode’. ‘Tom is in his absolute element. I think he really enjoyed rag-dolling people around the room!’ 

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Havoc is streaming on Netflix now