FILM REVIEW
Review Scoring Chart - 10:
Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above
Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1:
Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.
HAYWIRE
Dir: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas
Running Time: 93mins[A version of this article was originally published on Flixist]
Watching Gina Carano beat the snot out
of Michael Fassbender before kicking him through a glass door is
weirdly arousing, and since director Steven Soderbergh's movie is largely based around providing Carano a stage for assaulting famous actors in a variety of brutal ways, this should have been a film to rock my proverbial boat.
Unfortunately, 'should' turns out to be
the operative word, because Soderbergh was obviously
so enraptured with his man-destroying star that he forgot to build
the rest of the movie she should have been starring in. It's
certainly a showcase, but mainly because Carano is working so hard to
keep the movie from sinking due to the woeful lack of effort by
anyone else involved.
It's difficult to work out exactly what
Soderbergh was hoping to achieve with Haywire. As a vehicle for
Carano, she's given the bare minimum to do. She sends a litany of men to their deaths in ways most can only dream of,
which is fun for a time but soon becomes repetitive once it becomes
clear she is never going to be placed in any real danger. She faces
off against one or two people at a time and rarely takes more than a
few seconds to dispatch them. Carano's moves may be spectacular, but
feel wasted when pitted against such menial opposition.
She's hardly a woman who needs
protection, but the story seems to be operating under the mistaken
belief that she'll look stronger if all her battles seem easy. What
the movie needs are some ten minute fight scenes where Carano
(playing a character called Mallory Kane, but that's almost
incidental - there is no such thing as a 'character' in Haywire) is
pushed to her physical limits and forced to bring out her full
bone-crunching repertoire to succeed, emerging bloodied but proud.
Instead, she slaps Ewan McGregor around on a beach for a bit. No
offence intended to the man, but I doubt anyone has ever been pushed
to their physical limits in any respect by Ewan McGregor.
That casual approach extends to every
aspect of the film, sucking dry any sense of momentum or excitement.
Soderbergh's camera follows Carano like a love-struck puppy, but
prefers to sit back and watch than engage when she gets her
ass-kicking on. That does mean no shaky-cam, thank god, but also that
even her relentless MMA fighting style has to do twice as much work
to generate half as much excitement. Being unintrusive is one thing:
while it is admittedly a relief to watch a fight scene where the
combatants' entire bodies and every move are visible, those pleasures
are soon lost in the camera just seemingly not wanting to be involved
in any way.
Most of the fight scenes go without
music, which doesn't help the flat direction, but is a plus in that
the score is distractingly anachronistic whenever it does decide to
participate. Much of it sounds like incidental music from a Sixties
TV spy series, the sort of thing that would play when the hero is
making an initial investigation before getting into any real danger.
When Carano's character should be feeling dynamic and deadly, the
score is playing something more appropriate for a kitsch escapade
from The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'s later seasons - you know, the ones
that had Robert Vaughan dancing with gorillas and the like. A rooftop
chase with Carano (wearing a natty beige knitwear cap) being pursued
by a heavily armed SWAT team is rendered inert by composer David
Holmes' refusal to rise to the occasion.
The worst culprit of all, though, is
Lem Dobb's screenplay, which is minimal to the point of barely
existing. A jumbled chronology serves no purpose other than to give
Soderbergh the chance to use differently coloured lens filters to
differentiate between scenes in the past and present (a perfunctory
nod to his reputation as visual stylist), but everything else is
insultingly by-the-book. Job gone wrong, deadly ex-marine betrayed,
revenge, people to kill, blah blah. There is not a single twist or
subversion of expectations, just the systematic delivery of overused
action tropes until all the requisite villains have been dispatched
and the movie just... stops.
It's a struggle to come up with
anything good to say about the movie other than Carano, who is wasted
in such a half-hearted effort. She's a destructive juggernaut of a
woman, deserving to be the centre of something big, brash and worthy
of a high-octane title like Haywire. Instead, Soderbergh takes this
sexily terrifying superstar-in-the-making (yes, her line delivery
can be monotonous, but it's her martial arts that do the real
talking), gives her next to nothing to do and is content to just
leave the camera running roughly in her direction. If even Carano
couldn't re-energise the director's recent slump in form, he might as
well make good on those oft-stated retirement plans. [ 4 ]
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