It has been said that it is a sin to misuse Tom Hardy. It is almost certainly widely accepted that it is a grave sin to waste Timothy Olyphant. So forgive Havoc, oh Father, for it has sinned and sinned again.

To be clear, neither Hardy, as the morally grey—how grey? charcoal—cop protagonist Walker or Olyphant as the slippery Vincent are bad. You need a pretty big bucket to hide their lights. But given that, it’s a shame that it feels like the audience is enjoying their talents incidentally instead of Havoc showcasing them and using those skills for all their worth. Add in the likes of Forrest Whitaker also being taken for granted and it gets rough.

What Havoc does do is shoot, stab, and otherwise kill and maim enough people to populate a small country. That, perhaps, shouldn’t come as a surprise given director Gareth Edwards and cinematographer Matt Flannery’s previous collaborations include The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2. (Edwards directed both and Flannery acted as co-Director of Photography.) Unfortunately, the violence here is less compelling or satisfying than in either of those features.

One could perhaps argue Edwards and Flannery are going for a more realistic look at violence than either Raid films’ more style-heavy approach. This writer, however, finds that argument hollow. For one, even if that were true, the sheer volume of the bloodletting outstrips any kind of realism short of a story unfolding in a warzone. Second, it is clear there are style considerations even if they differ from those earlier efforts. There’s a sort of false grittiness to it that grows increasingly deadening as the Havoc dutifully marches through its 105-minute running time.

Everything might work better if the film had some sense of humanity and those stakes an audience could care about, but it largely doesn’t. Walker, a dirty cop and fixer for the corrupt Mayor Lawrence (Forest Whitaker), is a pretty cliched guy. He has dark past mistakes that are eating him alive and have cost him his family life. Sadly, the film spends little effort giving us a sense of who Walker once was or how much his daughter means to him. It seems to want us to assume that, of course, he cares. He’s a dad, right? The fact that getting his daughter a Christmas gift is a subplot that less exists and more drifts through the action doesn’t help.

Lots of action films off scores of largely personality-less people and do just fine with it. That’s because the movies make an effort and build in characters to care about, be they the protagonist(s), characters playing both sides of the fence, or baddies with personality and/or cool signature behaviors. Take a John Wick, for instance. First, we care about Wick despite his stoicism, thanks to the film opener and a few other key moments. Second, the film feeds you the occasional bad guy with a little more depth than the rest of the cannon fodder.

There’s almost none of that kind of work here in Havoc. And to be clear, this is a movie where a father, the Mayor, is desperately searching for his estranged son and girlfriend who the entire rest of the city wants dead. The human drama should be easy.

The one exception to all this is a new on-the-beat cop, Ellie (Jessie Mei Lee). Lee gives a performance that reads as honest and alive. That’s despite playing a sidekick role that feels cut to the bone in post. She’s not given much to play with but makes it count. When the dust settles, it’s nice to have one character who feels like a human being. But nice doesn’t get you to recommended.

Havoc shoots up the joint over at Netflix on April 25.

Havoc Trailer: