Havoc review – Tom Hardy’s gonzo gun mayhem misses the point

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Disillusioned cop Hardy must rescue a corrupt politician’s son from triads and police but potential for drama goes down in a hail of bullets The title is appropriate. Welsh director Gareth Evans is the action maestro who rocked our world with his superb skull-rattling thrillers The Raid and The Raid 2 ; this new one for Netflix certainly has its fair share of OTT gonzo mayhem. Shootouts in cramped interiors and in the open air sometimes seem to go on so long that the gunfire feels like an extended drumroll. Dozens of people get riddled with bullets from automatic weaponry; they all go into that shoulder-rolling, arm-waving, blood-spurting choreography. At one stage, a comatose and heavily bandaged person in a hospital bed gets the same machine gun treatment, and even this poor guy has to jitterbug, infinitesimally and horizontally, in his hospital pyjamas as he gets filled full of lead. But frankly the action and the violence is too chaotic and almost meaningless and the CGI-Gotham-...
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Sleepless in Seattle at 30: Nora Ephrons romcom still worth falling for

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Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan exude timeless star power as a couple kept apart for almost the entirety of the 1993 classic

Sleepless in Seattle – the film, the phrase – conjures the kind of quixotic romance that already seems long lost to us, on screen and elsewhere.

Nora Ephron specialized in whimsical courtships – majestic grand gestures, emotionally lofty stakes, couples too perfect for each other for lightning ever to strike so precisely again. As her sophomore directorial venture approaches its 30th year, Sleepless in Seattle remains famously unrivaled in the sheer brilliance of its feat: a love story in which the lovers share roughly 2 minutes of screen time. Ephron’s bold tribute to the cinematic romances of her youth is one deviously elaborate, protracted journey to the “meet-cute”. Fitting then, that our lovers’ tale begins on the road.

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