Action cinema has long been one of the most satisfying experiences for the always-insatiable moviegoer, being presented with the thrum of kinetic editing, expert choreography, and visceral photography to produce a sensory thrill. Watching a well-developed action sequence is akin to watching a stupendously choreographed dance, where the movement and struggle are part of the storytelling momentum. Two recent action movies show what can be achieved, one through intensity of the familiar and the other through elevating its concept. Both are fairly enjoyable escapes and reminders that, with the right hook or sense of passion, action cinema can be some of the most gleefully transporting sensory experiences.
One of the best genre filmmakers is Gareth Evans, a man who blew the industry away with his intense Indonesian martial arts epics, The Raid and its even better sequel. After watching those movies, and taking time to catch your breath, you have to wonder why Evans isn’t directing every Hollywood action movie, or at least been tapped to try his hand at juicing some studio franchise with his visionary feel for action. It’s still a mystery to me that Evans has only helmed two movies since 2014. Both of them happen to be from Netflix, and while I don’t pretend to understand the creative machinations behind this streaming giant, if I were them I would give Evans a $20-million budget every three years and tell him to do whatever he wants as long as it involves people getting hurt. At first glance, Havoc looks fairly conventional, a crime drama about corrupt cops and hoodlums fighting over who can get to a target first. You have to keep reminding yourself that Havoc is not The Raid and not aspiring to be, so the fact that it cannot rise to that extreme level of action excellence does not mean it is a failure. It’s not in that upper echelon of action cinema, like your John Wicks, but Havoc is most definitely a step above many of Netflix’s junky action-thrillers with A-listers that inevitably disappoint in their flailing execution.
Tom Hardy plays Walker, a veteran cop who works as an enforcer when the money’s right. He’s tired of being a tool to the rich and powerful and looking to get out and be a better family man. You know, the stuff of formulaic action boilerplate. He gets involved in a job gone wrong that leads to a gang war spreading and plenty of hired guns looking to find the son of the mayor (Forest Whitaker). That’s about it as far as the plot. It’s about different groups racing to get what they want first at whatever bloody cost.
Whereas The Raid was a martial arts action extravaganza with professionals at the top of their game getting the platform and material to showcase their amazing skills, Havoc is not that kind of movie; in fact there’s very few moments where the action consists of fisticuffs. This is an action movie built on car chases and mainly gunfights. It’s a cops and robbers kind of action movie, which puts less emphasis on hand-to-hand and more on room clearing. While the accumulated thrills might not be as gratifying as watching professional athletes launch exciting routines, there is still plenty to enjoy when watching finely developed gunfight sequences. The boring approach is simply to convey a shot-reverse shot dynamic: Character A fires a gun, then cuts to Character B being shot or dodging, repeat. Good directors will think about how to better stage a sequence so that each one has its own purpose, its own set of mini-goals, a set of organic complications that keep the conflict roiling, and ways to connect to character. Action sequences should not just be excuses to blow something up. With Havoc, it takes quite a bit to get going, but there are two standout action sequences that make it worthwhile and will satisfy most action aficionados.
The first sequence is a fight in a club that kicks off the movie’s shift to constant scrambling action. It’s about 50 minutes into the movie and all the respective characters have been slotted into their conflicting positions. We know who the good guys are, the bad guys, the goals in opposition, and what the stakes are, and from there the movie just takes off in a sprint until its final blast. The club involves different levels and different factions fighting and mixing, providing a series of changing complications that makes the sequence feel more lively and engaging. There are several inventive moves to avoid gunfire or reach guns, and the cinematography keeps the action centered and easy to comprehend. The best action sequences are planned like moving puzzles, and the more work that is put into the preparation, the more enjoyable the action can become. This club shootout scene finds numerous ways to keep the stakes upended and to place the characters in new forms of danger they have to quickly adapt to survive.
The second sequence is a climactic confrontation at a cabin in the middle of a snowy forest. It’s a prolonged siege sequence where the bad guys are attempting to break through into this secure location and take out our heroes. From this claustrophobic setting, Evans presents the antagonistic intrusions as unrelenting and coming from all four walls and even below as well. The characters have to constantly be moving and reacting to an assembly of threats while their protective walls begin to literally crumble. It is a literal onslaught. I’m shocked the cabin is still standing by the end. It’s an immensely engaging sequence that communicates the frenzy and anxiety of being under constant attack. The gunplay can be brutal and there are satisfying kills and battles between side characters throughout this sequence to avoid the sequence from feeling too repetitive. It feels in many ways like the whole movie has been leading up to this sequence, not just in a traditional linear-plotting fashion but also the viewer has been waiting for the director to fully go off with a celebration of action mayhem. This is Evans unleashing his best, and he’s adapted his creativity to the setting and the action sub-genre, so there’s different moments meant to present immediate gunfire problems and fast-paced responses. In this world, people aren’t all gifted as expert fighters, and thus even our heroes can falter under the harried circumstances.
Short of these sequences, the rest of Havoc has difficulty breaking free from the gravitational pull of its own genre cliches. Evans wrote the screenplay by himself and I’m surprised how flimsy so much of the story and characters come across. With 2011’s Raid, there wasn’t much of a story once the action stopped, but with 2014’s Raid 2, Evans was able to compose an undercover cop story that was just as compelling even when people weren’t getting kicked in the face. He can write colorful side characters that feel like they stepped out of a Tarantino-favorite grindhouse movie. He can write tense sequences that don’t have to rely upon action. He can do so much more than what Havoc provides, so it’s hard not to feel like this wasn’t exactly a passion project. It feels more like a serviceable vehicle to achieve the kind of action that Evans was looking to achieve. Now, if you’ve underwritten a genre movie because your real interest is staging the action, then you would expect there to be more action, correct? Strangely, Evans spends most of those first fifty minutes setting up his story, the same story that is awash in genre stock roles and cliches without much intrigue beyond a one-sentence description. Simply put, if you’re going to stick us with underdeveloped characters, don’t keep us waiting for the action. There’s so many characters in this movie that I think Evans gets overwhelmed trying to set them all up and involve them in the larger story. If they’re only going to be stock roles, why do we need 30 when 10 can do? I think Evans keeps his cast so big so he can unceremoniously bump off so many of them, which can be surprising, but I would have preferred doing more with the space their absence might have provided the narrative. There’s also an odd stylistic choice where any exterior shots are much more stylized, looking more like video game cut-scenes or something out of the realm of Sin City. It’s at odds with the rest of the film’s stripped-down look.
Havoc is a gritty and bloody action movie that can overwhelm at moments and underwhelm at others. The genre grist is pretty familiar, from our troubled antihero lead trying to atone for his past sins, to the dumb kids in the middle of a gang war they don’t understand, to the good-natured partner who has to grow up, so to speak, by getting their hands dirty. You’ve seen variations of these stories before, but the real draw is once Evans works up enough space to really unleash his invigorating action best. It’s a movie I wish was better but it’s functional enough for Evans to do his extraordinary thing. I just want more of his specialty.
In comparison, Novocaine isn’t going to be defined by stylish choreography or exceptional style. It’s a high-concept action comedy driven by flipping the genre script. Instead of our hero inflicting great pain on his foes, this movie is about a hero enduring amazing amounts of pain. It’s an underdog story where a novice is thrust into an unfamiliar situation and has to utilize his unique disorder, a blessing and a curse, in order to rescue the girl and save the day. It’s a great premise that lends itself to plenty of fun scenarios to fully capitalize on its bizarre potential, and that’s where Novocaine hits a sweet spot of entertainment.
Nate (Jack Quaid) is a shy assistant manager at a small bank in San Diego. He suffers from a unique medical condition where he doesn’t feel the burdens of physical pain. You might think this a luxury but it’s actually a great worry for Nate. Without his body’s alarm system he can stumble into grave danger without even knowing it, so he’s been living an overly cautious life as a result. That all changes when he meets Sherry (Amber Midthunder), a new coworker who takes an interest in him. They go out on a date and really hit it off. Things are looking up for Nate until bank robbers storm his work, kill his boss, and take Sherry hostage. Nate hijacks a cop car and goes chasing after the bandits to rescue Sherry. He’ll undergo lots of trials of pain to win back the girl who makes him feel things.
How do you make a person invulnerable to pain an exciting character? It’s the lingering Superman question, except nobody is going to confuse the character of Nate with Krypton’s orphaned son; if a character cannot feel pain how can we worry over their well-being? Now there’s a reason writers have been able to tell Superman stories for decades, even if the movies often struggle with representing the figure, and that’s because it just forces you to have to think harder. It can be done. With Novocaine, Nate is a hapless naif thrown into an action movie and trying his best to fit in. He lacks physical prowess, weapons training, and tactical planning. However, the only thing he has going for him is his inability to feel physical pain, and the filmmakers routinely find funny and entertaining methods to test how far one could go with this pain threshold. While his body isn’t registering pain he is still taking all the punishment. Nate is nowhere near indestructible, and a running gag becomes how utterly mangled and deformed his hand becomes from event after event (I thought it was just going to be a stump by the end). He takes quite a beating but because of the whole “mind over matter” matter, he’s surprisingly able to persevere where others could not. This allows Nate to become an unexpected hero where the rest of us would pass out from shock. The appeal of the movie isn’t so much the action itself but the ongoing response to all of said action.
The set pieces are what makes this movie so much fun, pushing Nate into action hero mode when he’s clearly awkward and not ready for the promotion. I loved his dry responses to every new injury, from mild annoyance to feigned surprise. There’s a scene where one of the villains is torturing Nate and he has to go along with the charade in order to appease his tormentor and get valuable information out of him. It’s a reverse interrogation where the target is actually trying to manipulate the guy with the pliers. I loved how quickly he could bounce back from whatever trauma, from catching a knife blade first and quickly yanking it out of his hand, to casually writing an address on his hand with a tattoo gun. There is a crafty ingenuity to how the filmmakers can make the best use of this superpower. There are some impressive kills that also made me wince in response, like reaching for a gun at the bottom of a deep fryer, or literally stabbing a person in the face with an exposed arm bone. Novocaine has a delightfully demented sense of humor that keeps everything grounded with mordant laughs even when it’s dishing out the punishment.
Even more surprising, there’s a buoyant love story that genuinely feels sweet that could have benefited from a little more development and attention. Sherry is the one who activates our protagonist and pushes him outside of his comfort zone. He lacks confidence in himself and has been living an overly cautious existence from fear of not being able to respond to his body’s emergencies. The man has been eating his food as liquefied goop out of a fear of choking. She introduces him to the simple joys of eating one’s food before it’s been vigorously blended, like the wonders of pie. Their first date was genuinely charming and I liked the chemistry between both actors. Midthunder has been a favorite of mine since Prey and I want to see her in more varied roles. When the bank robbery commences, I actually had an emotional response to these two being in danger and watching the other being put in danger. Once she becomes a hostage, Sherry is placed as the damsel to be saved, which is disappointing because I liked her contributions to the story and especially what she brought out of Nate. There is a revelation with her later that reorients our understanding of her but I don’t think it was fully necessary. Their budding romance is quite enjoyable and so I wish the story could also continue to develop this connection over its wild series of mishaps.
Novocaine is a great example of a movie that maximizes its unique premise to stand out. It’s structured like a traditional action-thriller but it never takes itself seriously, pushing forward a stumbling protagonist whose real gift is that he’s the human equivalent of a punching bag. This dynamic is ingeniously developed and showcased, and just when I was worrying the premise might get old or become repetitive, the filmmakers find new ways to twist their story into even better twisted results. I wish the female supporting role was more tied into the action and fun, and the villains are a bland blend of overly confident paramilitary goons. Still, the fun comes from Quaid and his light-footed screwball performance anchoring the bloody hi-jinks and demented humor. Novocaine is a fresh reworking of action movie tropes with a twist that allows the audience to heartily laugh at our hero’s pain and pratfalls. It’s the kind of humor and energy that reminds me of the Crank filmmakers. If you’re looking for a winning dark comedy bouncing against the formulas of action movies of old, settle in for some Novocaine and enjoy the pain.
Nate’s Grades:
Havoc: B-
Novocaine: B+
This review originally ran on Nate’s own review site Nathanzoebl. Check it out for hundreds of excellent reviews!