Tom Hardy’s newest Netflix thriller has everything on paper to make it a classic.
Hardy, a beloved action star, is joined in the cast by a great mix of newer talent like Justin Cornwell and Jessie Mei Li, as well as heavy hitters like Forest Whitaker and Timothy Olyphant.
Add to that a fascinating concept and a director in Gareth Evans who has spawned some of the most iconic action scenes ever in his The Raid films and co-created Gangs of London, and it surely felt like a no brainer for Netflix.
Unfortunately for Hardy and Evans, the reception has been less than positive.
Advert
Netflix viewers tuning in for the action thriller, called Havoc, have been complaining about the same issue, with one going as far as to call it ‘dreadful’.
The film follows a rugged detective forced to fight through the criminal underworld after a drug deal gone wrong.
One tweet about the film said: “If you want to see some absolutely comically dreadful CGI checkout Havoc on Netflix. F**k it’s bad.”
This has been a very common complaint about the film (along with Hardy's New York accent), with one comment on Reddit saying: “Am I crazy or are a lot of scene in this movie like… totally CG. The cars. The buildings.
“Some times I look at a scene and it just feels…fake?
“Was it cheaper to make cg scenes?”
Another comment agreed, adding: “Yeah I thought it all looked weird...the cityscapes looked cheap and fake, and the cuts during the action were way too frequent and too jerky - thought we'd left that trend well behind with the John Wick movies showing how unnecessary they were.
"Even Evans' Raid movies didn't do it. The story was just a confusing mess, even by action movie standards. The characters were cardboard cutouts, even the action was meh.
“Been a long time since I've been so hyped for a movie and left so disappointed.”
Another said: “Just finished watching it. Very disappointed, mid movie. I was expecting a lot of over the top fight sequences and all it have is shootings after shootings and CGI cars, very forgettable and doesn't worth a recommendation like his previous works.”
The film currently sits at a 5.9 on IMDb, with a respectable 65 percent critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, so it clearly isn't unanimous hatred across the board for the film, but many viewers have hit out at the levels of CGI in the movie.
Robert Daniels of the New York Times said of the film: “What Havoc lacks in characters and story, it delivers in two audacious waves of indiscriminate killing that are so bruising and relentless they make the John Wick movies look like Sesame Street.
“Though the characters in Havoc are forgettable, the carnage is gripping.”
While several critics are over the moon with the film’s violence and carnage, the movie’s 39 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes indicates that the apparent CGI issues have not gone down well with the average viewer.
Havoc is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Tom Hardy, Netflix, TV and Film, Film
Michael Slavin