Filmmaker Gareth Evans injected new life into the action genre when he unleased his extremely bloody, high-octane Indonesian action thrillers The Raid (aka The Raid: Redemption) and its sequel, The Raid 2: Berandal, starring Iko Uwais.
Ever since, fans have been eagerly awaiting a new feature-length project from the Welsh filmmaker who also dabbed in the series format with Gangs of London, which saw him direct a couple of episodes and the action sequences.
Evans has been quietly working on an English-language thriller, Havoc, led by Tom Hardy (Venom, The Dark Knight Rises), which hits Netflix on April 25, 2025.
In an interview with Empire, Evans shared that, unlike The Raid films, Havoc is not a martial arts film: it's more gunplay-centric and makes use of all kinds of objects. Evans had words of praise for Hardy, who came to him "fully physically prepared" in a "f-----g beast mode".
“I tapped him on the shoulder and it was just like granite," adds Evans, who described Hardy's character Waker as a detective going through a bad night. “Walker is not silky-smooth. He’s gonna cause as much carnage and as much mayhem as possible. He’s not grabbing your wrist and turning you into an arm lock. He’s grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and driving your face into the nearest heavy object.”
One of the most promising sequences in the film, says Evans, is one in a fishing shack where "it’s like an onslaught, a relentless attack.”
“Every corner of this place someone’s going to pop up with a gun, someone’s going to pop up with a knife, and they’re going to come from under the floorboards, around the corners, through this window, through that window,” he teases.
