Havoc is an amazing, must-watch action film.

Tom Hardy and director Gareth Evans take us inside the action film’s brutal final Scene.

Walker (Tom Hardy), a corrupt detective indebted to equally corrupt business mogul Lawrence (Forest Whitaker), races to find Lawrence’s errant son Charlie (Justin Cornwell), who is involved in a drug deal gone wrong.

“The story is told physically in many ways,” Hardy explains. Walker, according to Hardy, is a character who is used to “problem-solving with his hands and his physicality, as opposed to talking through it.” The action-forward approach was interesting to the actor. “It’s taking one of the characters that I love creating and building and putting them through the washing machine and see where they come out.”

The spin cycle, so to speak, begins when Walker realizes that Charlie is involved in the killing of Triad gang member Tsui (Jeremy Ang Jones), which he and his new partner Ellie (Jessie Mei Li) are investigating.

Walker’s efforts to locate the business magnate’s son are complicated by fellow corrupt cops Vincent (Timothy Olyphant) and Jake (Richard Harrington), who are looking for the cocaine that Charlie and his girlfriend Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) stole. Plus, Mother (Yeo Yann Yann), a high-ranking Triad, is out for revenge against the pair, believing they were behind her son Tsui’s death. 

This all leads to a series of deadly gunfights throughout Christmas night, and culminates in a massive showdown at Walker’s fishing shack.

How does HAVOC end?

After narrowly escaping the Triad’s onslaught of bullets at the Medusa Club, Walker brings Mia and an injured Charlie to his shack in the hopes of finally clearing his debt with Lawrence. But when he tries to inform Lawrence that he’s completed his end of the deal, he unknowingly tips off Mother, who has taken Lawrence captive. It’s not long before Triad members descend upon the shack, including the Assassin (MMA fighter Michelle Waterson), the seemingly unstoppable killer who’s been hunting Walker throughout the evening. 

Walker’s violent brawl with his would-be killer ends with him launching a harpoon through her neck a messy conclusion to an intricate fight choreographed by action designer and stunt coordinator Jude Poyer and his team. 

“There are plenty of times when you see Michelle kicking Tom,” Poyer told Netflix. “Real contact is being made, and Tom is hitting these very, very talented stunt people from Hong Kong, who kind of get insulted if you don’t make contact.”

Meanwhile, members of the Triad are holding Mia and Charlie at gunpoint when Mother arrives with Lawrence to carry out her revenge. She demands that Lawrence shoot Mia as payback for her son, but Charlie leaps in front of his girlfriend, and Lawrence refuses to pull the trigger. 

Ellie, with Vincent and Jake at her side, appears just in time to reveal that fellow Triad member Ching (Sunny Pang) is the one who actually betrayed Mother’s son. But Ching, who is handcuffed, claims it was Vincent and Jake who murdered Tsui. 

As Mother processes the new information, Jake breaks the silence with bullets. He takes aim at Charlie, only for Lawrence to act as a human shield, sacrificing himself for his son. Amid the confusion, Vincent fatally wounds Ching and leaves him to die, but not before grabbing the bag of cocaine he’d been searching for the entire night. 

The shooting ends when Charlie avenges his father by killing Jake, and prepares to flee with Mia. Ellie warns the couple that there are people still out there looking for them, and it would be safer if they turned themselves in. But Mia and Charlie decide to take their chances on the run. 

What happens to Walker?

In the film’s closing moments, Walker confronts Vincent a showdown, next to train tracks, that director and writer Gareth Evans compares to a spaghetti Western. 

“You’ve got the draw of the gun, you've got the location,” he says. “There are certain echoes of the cowboy movies that I grew up loving, but also there’s a moral ambiguity.”

By killing Vincent, Walker has eliminated the one person who knows all of his misdeeds, offering him the possibility of a clean slate. “There’s a question of, ‘Is Walker going to come clean? Is he going to admit to what he's done?’ ” Evans says.

Walker also reaches an understanding with Ellie, finally telling her she’s a good cop and that she should arrest him. “It was so sad because she’s finally earned his respect [and] the two of them have this understanding, and yet he’s about to be taken away,” says Li, who plays Ellie.

Evans, meanwhile, has his own idea of what Walker chooses to do in the end: “I know what I think Walker’s going to do next, but I like the idea of the audience being able to make up their own mind about what they think Walker’s next steps will be as he’s laying there propped up against a train, watching all the police cars arrive.”

He adds, “That ambiguity is something that was key to me and something that was really interesting about how to end the film … It’s down to the audience about what their version of Walker is. Is he redeemable? Is he someone that we can like and stand behind?”

We end with Walker laid up against the train, silent and unblinking, which begs the question: Does he die?

Nope! Evans settles it: “He’s alive.”