Tom Hardy’s new brutal action thrillerHavochas blasted its way straight to the top of theNetflixchart on its long-awaited debut despite a divisive set of reviews from both critics and audiences. However, it seems that the delays suffered by the film’s production ended up allowing directorGareth Evansto create a completely different movie to his original plan.
Speaking toFilm Storiesahead of the movie’s release, Evans explained how a four-year delay due to Hollywood’s strikes ended up giving him time to look at the movie more in the edit and make some experimental edits and be “super focused” when they were finally able to complete reshoots. He said:
“We wrapped the film in October 2021, and then we delivered an edit, and we all felt, collectively, “Okay, this needs maybe a week’s worth of work to be done.” Just to kind of iron out some story threads that needed a little bit more clarity here and there. We ended up in a situation where getting the ensemble cast back together again, in the same place for the same week, proved incredibly difficult. And so we were struggling to get everyone’s schedules to line up. And then just as we were about to figure that out, we got hit by the WGA strike and the SAG strike.
And so everyone kind of stood down for seven or eight months. Then any projects that were going on before that got given priority to finish and complete. I’ve never experienced the post-production that has expanded that long before, but what it did was, it allowed us to interrogate the film and really try things out, experiment with the cut, experiment with the edit. And then see what we really needed. You know what I mean? So that when we did finally get to do these sort of additional photography, it was super focused on only the bits that we felt we needed.”
In ‘Havoc,’ a Bloody Tom Hardy & Epic Action Sequences Redeem a Messy Thriller
‘The Raid’ director brings the action to Netflix.
‘Havoc’ Is Set to Be a Huge Hit, but Audiences Are Not Thrilled
Action movies frequently score higher with audiences than critics, butHavocis proving to be an exception to the rule. The filmdebuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a 66% Tomatometer score, and while many expected the audience Popcornmeter to score higher, it started with a low 56% and has since dropped to 48%. While that has not stopped more people watching the movie and sending it to the number one position on Netflix’s movie chart, it has also generated some pretty consistent complaints.
Surprisingly, many have found the movie to be too reliant on its relentless, bloody violence, which never lets up on the way to its next gunfight. However,the biggest complaintis a common one in movies and TV shows in general – everything is just too dark to really see what is happening most of the time. Naturally, though, when audiences see Tom Hardy’s face staring out of a Netflix banner, the pull is often too hard to resist a click.
Source:Film Stories
