Havoc (2005)

AKA: –
Year: 2005
Directed by: Barbara Kopple
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Bijou Phillips, Mike Vogel, Freddy Rodriguez, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Channing Tatum
Country: USA
Language: English (English subtitles)
Runtime: 01:32:03
Genres: Rape/Sexual Violence against Women, Teensploitation

Plot – Spoilers:
Allison (Anne Hathaway) and friends, Emily (Bijou Phillips) and Toby (Mike Vogel) are upper middle class teenagers and classic wiggers. Well, they are supposed to be teenagers, but all the actors look over-age. That blemish apart, the actors are quite successful in their portrayal of irritating characters who are quite pathetic in their interpretation of hip hop culture.

The friends stick to their wealthy neighborhoods and live in a fantasy world where they are gangsta. One night, while driving around after getting high, Toby suggests they drive into the seedier parts of town as an adventure. They attempt a score that goes wrong and Toby ends up literally peeing his pants. The experience however titillates the girls and Allison leads a girls-only return to the Mexican neighborhood several times and flirts with the gang leader Hector. From here, things go horribly wrong as reality smacks them in the face in ways their upbringing hadn’t prepared them for.

Favorite Scenes:
1. Havoc overall captures class struggles quite well but it is most apparent during the flirting scenes at the motel party and of course, the ‘rape’ scene. To Allison and her girl friends the whole downtown idea was their version of slumming. But at every stage, they expected control of situations and were fairly successful at it. Their success was in part due to the aspirational attitudes of Hector and his Mexican gang, to whom getting clean white pussy was the ultimate conquest.

As far as the girls were concerned, getting laid wasn’t the big issue. With whom mattered though.

It was all good when they were flirting, but when the moment actually arrived, Allison and Emily both were repelled though they reacted differently.

Allison used her fear and Hector’s desperation to be noble and gentlemanly to get out of it.

Emily on the other hand was game for the threesome until she realized she was being double-teamed by a bunch of Mexican riffraff. Her way of dealing with the aftermath of the shock was to go into denial and claim rape to wipe away her shame. To Allison’s credit, she attempted to remedy the situation, but the damage was already done by then. And the shootout did take place.