Havoc director Gareth Evans: ‘I’ve always been a disciple of the John Woo school of film-making’

Gareth Evans and I are hunched over my iPhone in a swish Soho hotel. I have a blurry photo, taken 13 years ago, of him receiving an award from Dublin Film Critics Circle. “I’ve still got it,” he says.

The director, an endlessly amiable Welshman, was then still reeling from the unexpected success of his third feature. The Raid, an absurdly kinetic action film shot and set in Indonesia, enjoyed an uproarious reception at Toronto International Film Festival in 2011 before going on to raves everywhere (and an award from us).

“I was totally underprepared,” he says, still staggered. “We really had no idea how it was going to play. We didn’t know what we had. We had no idea, because we made that film completely in a vacuum.”

I imagine the big studios were suddenly circling with awful ideas for his next film. He chortles.

“When the film came out, and then did what it did, it got me my manager, my agent, my representation,” he says. “So then opportunities started flooding in. I got offered a ton of stuff where it’s, like, ‘It’s The Raid, but it’s on a train.’ ‘It’s The Raid, but it’s on a bus.’ Ha ha!”

We will come back to the aftermath of that success, but tales of early furore may help those only casually interested in action cinema to understand why – stay with me – the real star of Netflix’s latest thriller ...
[Short citation of 8% of the original article]