Film: Haywire
Release Date: Jan. 20
Studio: Relativity Media
Grade: B+
It's official – Steven Soderbergh can hire anybody he wants to star in his movies.
From films packed with A-list starts to the ordinary citizens featured in Bubble, Soderbergh has now combined his two formulas in his latest action frenzy: Haywire.
Featuring an inexperienced protagonist and an all-star supporting cast, Haywire follows in the trend of previous Soderbergh movies like Contagion and the Ocean's franchise.
The plot structure has been recycled throughout Hollywood like scrap metal, but Soderbergh – being the wise veteran director that he is – took a gamble and struck gold.
Former female MMA fighter Gina Carano (Blood and Bone) fronts as covert operative Mallory Kane. She's a hard-hitting, high-kicking, roof-jumping, wall-climbing, beautiful sensation, bringing a faint aura of Lara Croft to the action as she strikes down her male opponents with a single swing.
A well-executed opening scene promptly proves Kane's expertise in hand-to-hand combat. Her confidence is untouchable, showing that Soderbergh knew what he was doing casting a real-life martial artist as the heroine. While Carano is obviously not actually annihilating her male co-stars, she does a great job convincing the audience otherwise.
It's slowly discovered through a slideshow of flashbacks that Kane was somehow betrayed by the agency she fought for. The majority of her screentime entails a person-by-person quest to unearth the origins of her betrayal. Despite the possible redundancy of this plot, through the camera of Soderbergh, the journey becomes surprisingly compelling. His framework productively captures the essence of Kane's emotions, instead of providing a dull 90-minute chase scene through impossible scenario after impossible scenario.
Carano persuades the audience that she is more than just another deceived vigilante. Her moves are unique: it's possible to make sense of what she's doing and when, meaning she's able to brutally damage people and simultaneously show how she's doing it. It's nice to know how an action star fights, because it aids with the connection to the character.
As mentioned before, Carano is well supported in the film by an onslaught of talented male stars. There's Kane's ex-partner, Aaron (Channing Tatum, The Son of No One), as well as her concerned father (Bill Paxton, Big Love). Ewan McGregor (Beginners) plays the shifty-eyed Kenneth, who's in charge of Kane's firm. They eventually meet Agent Coblenz (Michael Douglas, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) who strangely hires Kenneth for his operations. Coblenz's foreign contact is Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas, Puss In Boots), whose silence gives a mystifying tone to his character.
This line of talent was probably meant to either balance the inexperience of Carano's acting or to aid with box office profits. It mostly feels like the latter, but that's not important. The cast simply fills their respective roles well, but more time should have been spent structuring these secondary characters with more back-story and motives.
But in a full-swing action flick, motives are not really expected – numerous casualties, preposterous chase scenes, and iconic dialogue like, "Now I'm coming for you!" are. Haywire does all of this while honing the audience's attention and providing overall fairly well done filmmaking.
Haywire is not a fantastic film, but it certainly healed the gigantic gash left in the 2012 movie lineup from previous catastrophes like The Devil Inside, Contraband, or the overhyped and slightly disappointing Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Soderbergh should be considered for the 2012 Cinematic Medal of Honor.
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