Gareth Evans’s Havoc has a setup as elementally simple as the filmmaker’s 2011 breakout The Raid: Redemption and its 2014 sequel: A grizzled detective, Walker (Tom Hardy), fights his way through a gang war in a city plagued by urban rot, along the way uncovering that the highest echelons of society have ties to the drug-peddling underworld. Along the way, he puts down one gangster after another in violent fashion.

It’s established immediately that Walker is a capable but crooked detective whose history of taking dirty money puts him at the mercy of higher-ups. One such figure, Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), comes to Walker when word gets out that the politician’s son, Charlie (Justin Cornwell), is the chief suspect in a drug robbery gone bad and on the run from both police and cartel soldiers. “Don’t forget,” Beaumont growls, “I know what you did,” threatening to expose...