When a Movie's Only Purpose is to Be Content

Endless trash

There is something quite remarkable about the first Matrix film. Within minutes, every action movie that followed was riffing on its bullet-time effects, slow-motion action panning shots, and wire-fu. Yes, I'm fully aware that Hong Kong movies had been incorporating wire-fu years before The Matrix did, and Blade had already introduced bullet time a year earlier. However, let's not pretend it wasn't The Matrix that popularized it in mainstream culture.

By the time the two sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions, came out, all those tricks were already hack. What was once dazzling had become stale and cheesy. Nearly thirty years on, despite the plethora of rip-offs and bad sequels, watching that first film still holds up, and it excites you in the same way it did before. Why is that? It's the same reason the dinosaurs look and feel real in the first Jurassic Park but are lifeless CGI monstrosities in nearly every subsequent sequel. The feeling of innovation from the first film remains, whether watching it for the first time or the hundredth. That's why, even after countless terrible sequels, the first Alien film still excites and terrifies. The subsequent films have not diminished the impact of the first film.

This brings me to filmmaker Gareth Evans. The Raid is a special film. It made its mark on the action/martial arts genre in a way few films have.

If you haven't seen it yet, go watch it now. Its plot is paper-thin, and that is not an insult. The bad guy is at the top of a gang-controlled apartment complex. Cops have to fight their way floor by floor to get to the final boss. It's essentially a video game, with enemy opponents spawning seemingly out of thin air. The heroes fight their way to the top, occasionally fighting sub-bosses along the way.

What made the film stand out was the craftsmanship of it all. Action, when handled poorly or lazily, is incredibly boring. Watch a movie where it's just people shooting at something off-screen for minutes on end with no innovative or engaging camera movements; it's mind-numbing. Watch a fight scene where there are so many fast cuts it's impossible to tell what's happening. Limbs flail, and the camera races until, eventually, somebody wins, but we don't know why because we couldn't make heads or tails of it.

The Raid films' fight sequences are choreographed as if they were ballet. It's high art. The feat of having real people construct these sequences is as impressive as the final products. The amount of time and consideration that goes into each movement and set piece is nothing short of remarkable. I'm not saying you need to watch behind-the-scenes sequences to appreciate a film, but for certain films, it can only enhance the experience. Months of prep went into every single fight scene. The primary actors and stuntmen also happened to be silat practitioners, meaning they wouldn't need to rely on camera trickery to hide bad choreography. Everything would be done in-camera with shots allowing you to see each motion, each kick and jump. They also always cleverly utilized the geography. If a fight were in a hallway, they'd use the claustrophobia to their advantage. If the sequence were in a kitchen, what objects commonly found in a kitchen could be used? What about a fight taking place in the back seat of a car while motorcycles and other cars are chasing after it?

The camera moves fast and keeps pace with the action, but it's never shaky in order to hide bad choreography. The camera revels in letting the viewer see masters of the craft, delivering on the promise of making the best action movie of all time.

Is the movie realistic? Of course not. Rama, the protagonist, would have died from exhaustion after the second fight, but because the film delivers on its visceral promise, we buy into it. Our eyes are attuned to what bad choreography and lazy CGI look like, so when we see real people doing real things, we buy into the illusion.

The Raid II’s plot might seem needlessly convoluted and overly long for what is, at the end of the day, a movie where conflicts get resolved by people pummeling each other's faces in. Having said all that, the action not only delivers but also exceeds expectations.

Similar to The Matrix and John Wick, a plethora of movies inspired by this style emerged in its wake, and none of them were particularly good. You watch a movie like The Night Comes for Us, also from Indonesia, and witnessing wave after wave of faceless henchmen running at the heroes to get slaughtered no longer excites. None of it means anything. What was once entertaining now seems like a cheap trick. The best compliment I can pay such films is for their very impressive time management.

Then you have those Chris Hemsworth Netflix movies where, yeah, the action is thrilling in a turn-your-brain-off kind of way, but to what end? What is the plot of any of those? Does it even matter? Those movies are keenly aware viewers will be on their phones or making dinner during the boring talking scenes, only to occasionally look up once the action kicks off.

This brings me to Netflix’s recently released Havoc (what a generic title. Why not just call it 'Action Movie' or 'Tom Hardy’s Accent Continues to Grow More Incomprehensible and Sometimes He Punches People'?).

I had no idea this movie was in the works. I saw it pop up one day and that it was directed by Gareth Evans and hoped I'd be entertained. I wasn't. There is little information on the making of this movie available online, and I did minimal research. I put in as much effort into researching the nuts and bolts of this movie as Gareth Evans did.

From the opening seconds, the movie doesn't even look like it's set on Earth. It's an ugly city that's vaguely American. It's like what Gotham would look like as made by a hack director. Apparently, it was filmed in Wales, but the movie's scenery looks like a collection of CGI backdrops and random streets with dilapidated buildings and cheap back lots. We're treated to what I assume is meant to be an exciting car chase sequence, but whereas the fast camera technique enhanced the action in Evans' earlier works, here it's self-conscious. It's desperately trying to hide the piss-poor CGI effects and lack of anything new. It's a car chase. You've seen one; you've seen them all.

A shocking amount of nothing happens between action sequences. I'm not trying to be cheeky here; I genuinely don't know what this movie is about. For one, Tom Hardy's dialogue is incomprehensible (again, this isn't an insult; I love that Tom Hardy has gone down the full schlock clown rabbit hole in his career choices). Saying an action movie has a weak plot is nothing new, but this movie simply exists without breathing. It's hard to explain unless you watch it; it's just a whole lot of nothing, but somehow, it feels far more egregious here than in other cases.

For no reason, Forrest Whitaker and Timothy Olyphant show up. This movie doesn't need good actors or any actors, really. Why are they in this? Their presence adds nothing. Each character could have been a faceless, nameless henchman, and the result would have been the same.

What you might call the film's big action set piece takes place in a club. Dozens (maybe even hundreds) of nameless henchmen run towards our characters just to get shot in the face or dismembered or smashed into something. There's no clarity to it. We don't know what's at stake. The choreography is neither interesting nor dynamic. What once was fresh and fun in earlier films comes off as pathetic and desperate here. The filmmakers are trying to trick you by using the same visual style with none of the integrity. Why are these people so willing to die? Are they fighting over cocaine? Or was it papers? I think someone is trying to get the papers. It might be over trying to kill a witness. In any case, I was trying to think about this happening in the real world, a situation where hundreds of people died so their low-level crime boss could get his hands on the papers. You know, I recently watched the movie Bloody Sunday, which details the British army opening fire on Irish marchers in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. I felt the weight of every single death. Thirteen deaths felt like a thousand. Here? Hundreds of people die for no goddamn reason.

The biggest crime the movie commits is none of the carnage is fun. Remember how exciting the club scene in the first John Wick movie was? It felt fresh, and we were fully on board with him getting his vengeance against those Russian motherfuckers. Watching Havoc made me feel like that old fat woman yelling at Tarantino for his movies being too violent.

My question is, what happened? I know for a fact this isn't a case of Gareth Evans being a one-trick pony. Watch his earlier action film, Merantau. While it may not be as explosive or flashy as his Raid movies, all the hallmarks of a skilled craftsman are there. While I didn’t love and barely even remember his movie, Apostle, it was still well-made. Is this an example of him just phoning it in? Was this an obligation due to whatever contract he signed with Netflix? I don't know, but what I do know is there's no way he looked at any of the action sequences in this movie and was pleased with them.

Movies like this exist because algorithms and producers have ten-minute brainstorming sessions and think, "Okay, market something for action fans; really emphasize The Raid in all the marketing. See if either Laurence Fishburne, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, or Forrest Whitaker are available to lend gravitas. As for the villain, see if Timothy Olyphant or Sam Rockwell is available. Give Gareth a weekend to write the script and a week to shoot it. Wait, the tax break is HOW big if we shoot in Wales?”

This is not a movie. It’s content. No one on Earth will ever watch this movie twice, and that includes Gareth Evans.

What baffles me is the movie finished production in 2021. What warranted four more years until it came out?

I’ll always love the first John Wick and The Raid movies, but I’m tired of the exhaustive sequels and spin-offs and rip-offs. I want fun in my action movies. Give me Patrick Swayze in Road House. That movie wore its heart on its sleeve and was never winking at the audience, in on how ridiculous it was. It was ridiculous, and cheesy, and unrealistic to the point of absurdity (the man bad guy lives across the street from Swayze, that's the level of storytelling we're talking about), but because of and despite all that, it features a scene where a henchman tells Swayze "I used to fuck guys like you in prison" and it's fucking glorious.