Havoc and the Portrayal of Stressed Cops
It’s 1:00 a.m., it’s a good time to go to sleep. Especially with a 9:00 a.m. oil change. After the night routine and throwing on pajamas, it should have been lights out. Apple TV doesn’t let you do that. An idle tv screen likes to show ads and that’s when I saw Tom Hardy with a badge.
I had this conversation with Shannon the other day. Why do we have to watch every single violent cop and military film? My dad watched them. I think all the guys in my family leaned towards them, but it still doesn’t explain why I watch them.
Something has shifted for me this year though. After my meniscus tear, I now don’t automatically believe I could handle myself in all of those situations. Someone limps across a warehouse with a floor covered in broken glass while holding a rifle and keeping an eye on anyone coming up from behind. Not happening. The adrenaline will wear off and half your brain will probably start contemplating your life choices.
In the Last of Us this week when they took a shotgun to Joel’s kneecap I knew it was over. Not that he couldn’t have made it if his team had showed up, but who would want to? A world crawling with zombies where you have to move at a minute’s notice. Yeah, it was more humane to go right then. Which is to say with a knee injury, I now judge injuries in film with a larger wealth of knowledge and it’s sad how the end of the road on the scale comes way before the climactic battle.
Back to the movie. It opens with Tom Hardy walking into a bodega. The lighting and scene immediately remind me of two scenes: Al Pacino running into Ellen Barkin in Sea of Love at a bodega and Hardy in a bodega in Venom. Two very different scenes, but they both hold similarities with the tone of this opening scene.
I doubt I’ll finish this movie before passing out, but it’s not bad. Timothy Olyphant as the bad guy I haven’t seen in a while, not since the worst Die Hard in the series. I also watched Hardy in Mobland recently, and I think I prefer him as one of the bad guys.
Why do I like these films? I can’t come up with that at this moment, but I think it has to do with the immediacy of the character development. The leads are put into a hectic situation and by the final showdown, they have to figure out themselves, figure out what they still have to sort out, and also come to terms with the fact that they might die at any moment before any of this happens.
There are twenty minutes left and the film is entertaining, but I wish they would have had more trademark Hardy monologues.
