Finding its feet somewhere between The Bourne trilogy and Bond, Haywire is an offbeat but hard-hitting effort from director Steven Soderbergh. It boasts huge star power – with Michael Douglas,Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas and fast-rising Hollywood A-Lister Michael Fassbender all appearing – but is centred largely on the performance of rookie actor/veteran MMA star Gina Carano.
The premise for “Haywire” – directed by Steven Soderbergh – is a simple one; the beautiful but deadly special ops soldier Mallory Kane (played by former Strikeforce MMA fighter Gina Carano) is framed by members of a shadowy underworld for a crime she didn’t commit, and must fight back or lose her life as she knows it.
Without question, Carano has huge potential as a future action movie heroine; she’s gorgeous, unconventionally charming and – as you may expect from a successful cage-fighting star – is at her best in the scenes that rely solely on kicking, fighting, running away from bad guys. It would seem too easy to point out the flaws in her performance given the caliber of those around her. Haywire is Carano’s first real acting gig after her fighting career ended in 2009, and without being too patronising, it’s an impressive debut all things considered. Simply put, you’ll probably never go to the cinema to watch Gina Carano act; but after watching her in Haywire, you may wish to watch her kick some serious bad guy ass.
The numerous fighting sequences – the success of which largely rely upon Carano’s believable, hard-hitting ninjaskillz – are fantastically entertaining, very hard-hitting and frankly, pretty God-damned cool. There’s specifically no soundtrack during these sequences, which places greater emphasis on the instant consequence of each hit, each fall, each gun shot. As a result, the net impact is increased.
Action aside though, Haywire is strangely undramatic and a little uninspiring. It’s B-movie fare, certainly; but there’s no reason given to care about the array of one-dimensional, shady government types and double agents all gunning for Mallory Kane; all of whom have the annoying modern movie habit of talking just like modern movie spies talk, which in turn has the adverse effect of alienating and apathising the viewer – baffling them with (spy) science, if you like. It’s most baffling – given Soderbergh’s influence on the film and writer Lem Dobbs’ history in the thriller genre – that the accomplished array of acteurs aren’t put to better use.
The typically hazy, fade-in-fade-out cinematography (from Soderberghs’ own alias Peter Andrews) has been given a retro twist, helped along by David Holmes’ buoyant, foot-tapping score – but as a whole, came across like those fake car commercial movies that are shot like a movie without actually being one.
And in summary, that’s how I felt about Haywire; it seems to have all of the components to be great, but somewhere along the line, settles on being reasonably good instead. Decent Friday night fare, though, and worth a watch solely for the blazingly great sight of Gina Carano locking a lethal-looking cross arm-breaker on Channing Tatum before smashing his head into a table. (I like Channing Tatum, for the record).
All in all, a fun and untypically shallow entry into the crowded action genre from Soderbergh; I look forward to more of the same from Gina Carano.
Deryn O’Sullivan (@silverscene_)
Deryn Paul O'Sullivan 