Review of Havoc (2005) by Alex P — 19 Aug 2007

This movie is TERRIBLE.

Apparently written by some chick named Jessica Kaplan and sold to New Line when she was only 16, it was later re-written by Stephen Gaghan, so extensively that she now only gets a 'Story By' credit. Makes you wonder how awful the first draft was. Kaplan apparently died in a freak plane crash when she was 24, so tragically we won't be seeing any more of her worthless writing translated to film. Too bad. She sucked so young.

Steven Gaghan also wrote "Traffic" and "Syriana" so I find it hard to believe he ever allowed this piece of garbage to be filmed with his name still attached. It will forever remain an indelible shit stain on an otherwise fine career.

The story is trite and unbelievable. OK, we get it. The rich white kids from the Palisades want to be gangsta. Is this supposed to be profound? Apparently the filmmakers think so, because they slather it on pretty thick.

I have no problem with someone like Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem), who actually grew up in the inner city urban culture of Detroit. But these kids fucking piss me off. They couldn't be whiter if they dipped themselves in baking flour. Yet they present themselves as "hard" and "street" and "straight dope" and they rail against all that is "whack". The thing of it is, these kids, they mire themselves so deep in this culture that they can't turn it off. From their style of dress to their colorful vocabulary and hip-hop vernacular, something about this world gets tattooed on their soul.

I know of what I speak.

My brother is one of these kids. I barely recognize him in the pictures on his MySpace page. Smoking blunts and flashing gang signs ... that's not anything he learned from his family upbringing or from his childhood environment. He picked up all that shit by watching MTV Cribs.

The kids in this movie, however, are all pretending to be gangsta. (One of them, played by the atomically bad Mike Vogel, actually pisses himself when an authentic O.G. pulls a gun on him.).

The whole point of the main character, Allison, is that she can choose to play whatever kind of character she wants, because, as she says, "I'm bored.".

But the problem therein is that the whole life of the character feels phony.

It doesn't help that Anne Hathaway is playing this character. She's awful. She's abysmal. She gives bad actors a bad name. After doing two "Princess Diaries" films and "Ella Enchanted", I guess she wanted to change her good girl image and so she did this film, where she gets to swear and drink and do drugs and give a guy a blowjob and flash her breasts no fewer than three times. What her manager should have explained to her is that it's not enough to play against type, you actually have to act the role well too. Kudos on the first part, Annie. Definitely playing against type. But it's so far against type that it's out of your fucking league. By light years. Anne Hathaway is so wrong for this role, and she fucks it up so badly ... well here's what I thought when I was watching it.

This is like if Anne Hathaway played a certian WVU grad student who shall remain nameless doing her "Philadelphia Story" thing while pretending to be some white bitch who wants to be black.

It's really that bad.

But I must admit I came into this film thinking that Anne Hathway must have a magic lamp squirreled away some place. A magic genie is the only explanation for her career. She's flat out untalented and not that attractive. And now she's playing JANE AUSTEN? That is an insult to two-hundred years of British Literature.

Fuck Anne Hathaway.

Fuck her sideways with a railroad spike.

Even Freddie Rodriguez is bad in this film, but it's not really his fault; the only character in recent memory more stereotypically Mexican than this guy is the fucking Taco Bell Chihuahua.

The only redeeming factor of the entire film is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing Sam, aka White-Boy WannaBe Gangsta #3. This character is on screen for maybe ten minutes, he has no real bearing on the plot or the development of major characters, yet he is the only one who has any air of authenticity to him. He is the only actor that I believe really IS this person. He's a ball of uncontained energy, a self-propelled superball in a rubber room, a kid whose Ritalin has been replaced with No-Doze, and the only thing that slows him down (albeit moderately) is a toke of weed. His speech patterns, his physical life, the way he wears his motherfucking HOODIE, everything smacks of honest-to-goodness truth in advertising, and if that's not what we're trying to do, then somebody please explain to me the alternative.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the only thing keeping this movie from being a half star.

What really worries me is that I first heard about this movie when I saw it in the personal collection of one Mr. Phillip Ward BECK. Come on, Phil. Please tell me this was a gag gift and you're one of those people that can't stand to throw anything away. Otherwise, you got some 'splaining to do.