How Havoc Director Gareth Evans Created The Movie's Biggest, Wildest Action Setpieces [Exclusive Interview]

This post contains spoilers for "Havoc."

We first learned about "Havoc," the new action film from "The Raid" director Gareth Evans, way back in February of 2021. It's been a long road for the movie, and when I caught up with the filmmaker over Zoom last week, the reason behind that delay was the first thing we talked about.

Here's the conundrum I have about "Havoc": Overall, it's my least favorite Gareth Evans movie by a mile. I admittedly haven't seen 2006's "Footsteps," but "Merantau" is a kick-ass martial arts film, "The Raid" and "The Raid 2" are legendary, and I finally got around to seeing his gnarly 2018 folk horror movie "Apostle," which is such a fun change of pace and totally rules. Comparatively, the character work in "Havoc" doesn't feel as strong, and the plotting isn't as propulsive. But purely on an action scale, which is presumably the main reason anyone would press "play" on this in the first place, "Havoc" is genuinely jaw-dropping. It's a reminder why Evans is one of the true modern masters of this genre, and the creativity, choreography, and controlled chaos on display here is nothing short of extraordinary. There's something special about watching someone who knows their craft inside and out execute at the top of their game, and in a few key scenes here, I felt like I was in action cinema nirvana. Are there issues with the movie? Yep. But does the incredible action ultimately outweigh those issues? For me, and I'm guessing for a lot of other action junkies, the answer is yes.

I had a great conversation with Evans about designing the film's biggest and most memorable setpieces, why there's such a brutality to the film's shootouts, some of his favorite shots in the movie, and much more.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

"Havoc" has been on our most anticipated films of the year list for, I think, the past four years. Can you tell me what happened between wrapping production in 2021 and the movie finally being released in 2025?

Gareth Evans: Short answer? Scheduling issues, strikes, and then waiting to get everyone back in the room together so we could actually finish what was literally two weeks worth of pickups. It was just a perfect storm of all those things together, but what it gave me — because we wrapped that film in October '21 and we delivered a cut in February '22 — and so what it gave me, then, is this unusual luxury of being able to sit with the film, albeit for three years, and be able to scrutinize, reshape, try different things out, experiment with it, and get to the core of what was required from the pickups.

So yeah, it was a long time to sit in standby mode, essentially. But I felt really grateful that the studio backed us 100% and always made us feel like this is a film that's important to them, and important for us to get right, and even though we had to wait an awful long time for all of our ensemble cast to be available at the same time, that they were going to wait with us and provide nothing but support. So yeah. It's been an awful long time coming, but I'm glad to finally have it out. I've been dying to share stuff with everyone for such a long time.

Yeah, absolutely. So did the movie change a lot in that period where you had that downtime to look at it?

Not a huge, huge amount. It was more like you get some distance from it, so then you start to look at things and be like, "Okay, do we absolutely need this beat?" You start looking at ways to streamline elements. Because when you're really close to a production and you're really close in the edit straight after you've wrapped, you're still in the haze of, "I know what we had to do in order to get that scene. I know the hoops we had to jump through in order to shoot that. Oh, we got rained off for all of that night and then we crammed in the last three hours, but we just made it."

After that amount of time, you have a certain emotional detachment then from what it took to achieve it. Then you start becoming laser-focused on, what does the story need? What's better servicing the film? So in a way, it provided clarity. Although, I don't really want to do another three-year stint to finish a movie again. But yeah, that was one of the perks.

There's a shot that kicks off the opening car chase where the camera does this whip-pan from left to right, and then it speeds down the street and up and around the truck. That movement is so fast and drops you in so quickly, and when I was watching it in the moment, it felt like a unique shot in the realm of cinematic car chases. I was wondering if originality is something that you're striving for when you're designing a scene like that.

Yeah, 100%. It's like you'll have seen a million car chases in action movies. I've seen a million car chases in action movies. And I'm always trying to find something, regardless of whether it's a car chase or even a fight sequence, I'm always trying to find some new shot idea, or some new way of presenting something that makes it feel fresh, that makes it feel new. So yeah, that was a key component. I'm glad you picked up from that opening shot, because it also serves the purpose of throwing us into a place in the city at a time, and literally making the audience feel like we're having to play catch up with a story that traditionally might've had a whole lot of set up and preamble before the truck chase happened. So we're in the middle of a pursuit, and eventually we're going to figure out why and who is involved, but not yet. So I wanted to drag the audience by the scruff of their neck into that sequence. So that was one way of achieving that.

But yeah, it's similar to when we did "The Raid 2," we did the car chase, and I knew I didn't have the budget to do something that was a "Fast and Furious" film. I couldn't crash through 10 different vehicles in a storefront. So it was, "All right, how do I make these six or seven cars sustain me over the entire sequence?" And it became, "Oh, fighting with vehicles. Chipping away at them the way that we chip away at bodies in these martial arts set pieces." So it was always trying to find the unusual, always trying to find the unique secret sauce for a sequence and then lean in on that.

So speaking of designing set pieces, the club scene in this movie is just totally insane, man. I imagined for any scene like that, you just take it piece by piece until it all comes together. But were there any aspects of it or any specific sections that were especially tough to film in that scene?

All of it. [laughs] It was challenging. I think weirdly, one of the biggest strains on that sequence, I had my art department — they built us an entire nightclub from scratch for that sequence. That was built in a soundstage. And me being me at my worst and most self-indulgent, we decided to design a set piece that was set in a nightclub that would also have a little mezzanine horseshoe floor to it that would go all the way around the club. So then there were engineering implications that come along with building that, because they had to also support all of our bodies and weight of the people on top, as well as crew.

But then just to make matters even worse, I decided I wanted to have a glass floor section, purely so I could do two gags. But the one that was probably the biggest strain was I wanted to be able to take the camera underneath the glass floor, but to start up above. So that required the art department to lift one section of glass floor out, and then put it back in, which required two hours worth of prep time before we could shoot it. And then we shot that shot all for the sake of six seconds of screen time. It felt important when we designed it. [laughs] I realized how much of the circus has to move just because of my idiot brain that came up with that stupid idea, so yeah.

How about the cabin shootout? That's another thing that I almost just couldn't believe as I was watching it. Anything stand out to you from your memories of filming that?

Yeah, it was so much fun to shoot that sequence. That sequence was a little bit, without sounding self-serving, it was a little bit of a sort of a revisit of two things. It was a revisit of the farmhouse shootout from ["Gangs of London"] episode five, that we shot in the UK. And then structurally, a mini-version of "The Raid," where we would start off with guns, go into bladed weapons, and then become hand-to-hand. So it was almost like the structure of it was like that, a mini-condensed version within it. So yeah, all of it had little special moments. Again, because I'm an idiot, we required multiple builds to accommodate gags like going under the trap door, and coming back up, or the flip through the beam with the collapsing roof and everything else.

But what was really fun about that sequence was the design aspect, because along with Jude Poyer, my stunt coordinator, we scrutinize every sequence, and we scrutinize every little beat of it. Not just in terms of camera and edit points and the action itself, but also where things come from. So we knew that we were paying homage to John Woo and Ringo Lam and Johnny To with this film, but when it came to the gunplay in that fishing shack, we knew that we were going to slightly exaggerate how many bullets could be fit within the mag.

But every time the characters would empty a gun, they would throw it away and recycle and grab somebody else's. So what that meant was we had to figure out and orchestrate which triad members would fall through windows and come into rooms and what guns they would have with them, so that we could logically track the weapons usage across the room. So that was something that I really wanted to [be specific about], because I know that there'll be people complaining about, "Oh, it's so unrealistic. They shoot guns all over the place!" But really, if you check the weapons that they pick up, they are using them. They are recycling weapons throughout that space there.

Wow, that's wild.

I did want to ask you specifically about the gunplay and the shootouts because you frequently have characters with these automatic weapons just blasting someone in big bursts of a dozen shots or something, and there's a brutality there that you don't normally see in films like this. So what went into that decision, that heightened, "we are just going to empty an entire magazine every time we shoot a gun" kind of thing?

Partly, it's paying homage to what John Woo was setting up. So there are moments in there which are straight out of "Bullet in the Head" or "A Better Tomorrow II" and "Hard Boiled" and "The Killer." And I'm sure fans will pick up on that. We actually do have a little Easter egg as well where there's one music cue that is literally lifted from "A Better Tomorrow" that we managed to get the rights to. So my inner geek is really happy with that.

But in terms of the other thing as well is I've always felt like if you're doing a film with gunplay, the most irresponsible version is the version that's clean. The most irresponsible version is the version that doesn't show people in pain or consequences for the violence. So I'm not chasing a PG-13 rating, and I'm not chasing a 12A here in the UK. It's very much an 18. It's very much an R in the US. It's very much aimed at an adult audience in terms of the action, and so it should be bloody, it should be violent. When people get shot, they should bleed out. But the excess is all about my love of Hong Kong action cinema.

How has your approach to visual effects changed since the early days of your career?

It's been interesting because when I first did "Merantau," I had no idea the level at which VFX could be applied. That was my first sort of experience with it. And I remember there was one shot in "Merantau" where my VFX guy, Andi Novianto from Clay Studios in Indonesia, he put in a digital wall for us because we couldn't afford to build one. And I remember being blown away that was possible. I don't know why I didn't think it was possible, because I'd seen a plethora of sci-fi films that did far more crazy things with VFX, but for whatever reason, it never applied to my work. Maybe because I was working at a low budget level, I just didn't think it was attainable.

And gradually over time, then, the more experience I've had, the more times I've worked with VFX supervisors on the floor and learned about what it is they need, what they want for them to be able to bed in VFX better, the more I've understood what the limitations are but also how we can help in terms of world build, in terms of action design. Because we did a lot practical. There's an awful lot of VFX helping us out in places. Andi's one of the best there is in the industry, I feel, at doing blood and debris hits and muzzle flashes. I just think his attention to detail is exceptional.

But then we had incredible work from all of our other vendors, One of Us and Troll and Dupe, who did incredible world-building work for us because obviously we were shooting a film that set in an amalgamation of different East Coast cities around America, but shooting it fundamentally in Wales. So it was always with one eye on looking at "Can I fill half my frame with enough real architecture, so that when we bed in the rest of it and augment it, that there's a frame of reference to try to make it feel more cohesive so that you don't become aware of the artifice of it?" So yeah, it's a game changer for me, but it's how to use it judiciously and how to use it in the right way is always my preference for it.

Cool. So I only have a couple more minutes with you. I just wanted to ask if you have a favorite shot in this movie. You were talking about your inner geek earlier. Is there one thing that you were really pleased with that you were able to accomplish in this film?

Oh, man. I love the introduction of the assassin prior to the Laurence ambush. That big crane down coming in, and then with the motorbike coming in, I've always loved that. But then I also equally love the rhythm — shortly after that, there's a shot that goes from our guy with the gun up, the bodyguard with the gun up, that travels out through the car into the street literally as the assassin's gun comes back down in the opposite direction. Things like that, they're only small moments, but it's like things like that, the symmetry of it and the rhythms of it and the percussive elements of it, that really excites me. When that works out perfect, there's a dance between camera and performer, that makes me really excited. If I give her some more thought, I'd probably come up with 15 other shots that I'd really love. Though I should give credit to Matt Flannery for being able to execute them all the time, but yeah.

Last question: Do you have your next project lined up as a director?

If you'd asked me in about two, three weeks time, I'd probably give you a much more informed answer. I have something that we're planning to shoot in the summer. I'm just shy of being able to announce it just yet.

Well, I'm glad to hear that. Selfishly, I hope that it won't take as long between movies this time around, so I'm just glad to hear you've got something cooking.

Oh, no, it'll probably be a much quicker process. And obviously, naturally, it's another rom-com.

"Havoc" is now streaming on Netflix.