Ravage

Ok, this action packed crime film is bloody, brutal, gritty, but the importance of bodycount makes you get rif off your head the rest of the story. No one cares about the intrigue which only a handful of us will follow. The action is really powerful, well made, but the camera work is also "too much", it may make you dizzy. The action scene in the night club is inspired from JOHN WICK, maybe more than the previous THE RAID films - directed by the same guy. And this scene is too long for me, I nearly felt bored. The ending is lousy. Yes, a forgettable film. Tom Hardy is just OK. Not more. I prefered THE RAID features; concerning GANGS OF LONDON, I have not watched yet - also made by Gareth Evans.

I looked forward to this one, my expectations were high. But yet again I was disappointed. As a matter of fact, I didn't even manage to finish it. Gave it about 48 minutes when I decided I had enough. The biggest problem with this movie is, like with so many others, I just didn't care. Even when a movie is violent and gritty, to get involved in it, you'd at least need to feel for someone. Have some compassion for someone, hope that someone survives, gets revenge and "saves the day". None of that in this one. Couldn't care less about who got hurt, shot, kidnapped or killed. Even if they would've killed Hardy off, I would've shrugged it off. Whatever.

All it is, is a chain of uninteresting bad guys (and bad girls) running around in an ugly scenery beating each other up and killing each other. Maybe it's just me, but I was bored.

4 Stars because it's Tom Hardy. But it's time they upgrade him to what he really deserves. 007 Maybe?

Shooting is cartoony, characters miss a whole lot but fire a lot of bullets with almost no precision, combat is visceral, satisfying and gory and in style of the director, very similar in the way it was shot to the legendary The Raid, camera follows the action closely but as the action itself is hectic so is the camera so a lot of the scenes move really fast and have quick cuts in between action pieces.

Story is predictable and you start to understand the whole narrative in the first 30 mins and characters are too one dimensional to even slightly care about them.

Tom Hardy gives a slightly better performance here than he did in Venom, his character is gruff, gritty and jaded and he manages to somewhat sell it, but he shines in his fight choreography which is simply put glorious and over the top.

Gun violence on the other hand seems too gratuitous, characters suffer multiple injuries yet somehow are still left standing and are able to one shot someone else. Precision is completely thrown out the window in some segments of the movie, in one scene a character is shot through a car window with a shotgun blast that barely scratches him and in the next a character riding a train is shot down multiples times from a big distance with a pistol.

The entirety of the traffic in the movie is for some reason almost completely computer generated, cars move unrealistically and really look out of place, ruining the immersion and making the whole viewing experience seem really cheap. Pistols sound epic but not in a realistic way as every pistol fired sounds like a cannon being shot and a lot of pistols in the movie seem to have rapid fire capabilities in one scene then suddenly becoming single shot in the next. Submachine guns firing sounds like miniguns.

You really have to suspend your disbelief when watching this movie as it's so hilariously unrealistic.

I really like Tom Hardy and Timothy Olyphant - both are incredible actors. But man, what a waste.

The cinematography was a complete disaster. Who at Netflix actually approved this? The camera work was all over the place, and that weird Sin City knockoff CGI style made it even worse. It was distracting, not stylish.

At times, it almost gave me Die Hard vibes - just a little. But without the sharp wit or the comedic relief that made Die Hard a classic, it ended up feeling hollow.

Seriously, with this kind of budget and cast, they had all the ingredients for something great. Instead, they threw it away on cheap visual gimmicks and chaotic direction.

What a waste of production. They really need to stop burning money and start making films that actually make people go, "Wahhh!" - not "What the hell was that?"

Do you like non-stop gunfire for two hours with no plot or interesting characters? Then you'll love Havoc!

The camera angles are strange, either shaking or swerving violently, or moving to unusual angles such as from underneath, for no apparent reason.

There's more gore than a horror film such as metal hooks ripping open flesh on a face, for absolutely no reason as it's a gunfight.

Every line in the movie has swearing. I don't care about contextual language but it was like they told the AI writer to include it just for the sake of it, even when it doesn't sound natural or make sense!

The nightclub scene was the only part worth watching due to the martial arts set to thumping music, but avoid the rest.