In Review: Haywire

The Gist

Neatly done, tense, and well-directed, Haywire works in spots and keeps it going until you figure out the whole scheme of things; unfortunately, it leaves a few spots unchecked with gaping empty spaces and the large lack of emotional range makes for a somewhat shallow experience.

The Good

• succeeds largely at being a tense thriller
• action sequences are well-done, makes complete use of Carano's fighting prowess

The Bad

• Carano's emotional range rival that of a teaspoon
• largely unemotional script, unemotional characters that don't evoke your empathy

Synopsis

Mallory Kane (Carano) works as an agent for a private contractor working for the government operated by her ex-boyfriend Kenneth (Mc Gregor). After her last mission in Barcelona contracted by Rodrigo and Coblenz (Banderas and Douglas), Kane plans to retire, which Kenneth accepts, asking one last mission from her, a paid vacation of sorts to pose as the wife British agent Paul (Fassbender) who's meeting crimelord Studer to get further intel on his operations. As the night progresses, Kane discovers something that leads to events going haywire.

Carano, the film's main star, is not an actress, but an MMA fighter.

Why so Serious?

Soderbergh apparently saw Carano battle it out at the Octagon and thought of making a movie centered on her hand to hand combat skills. The result is Haywire, and as expected, Carano as a seasoned fighter and her own stuntwoman is excellent. But as an actress, the depth of emotions she displays on this film is questionable. The camera loves her, and Soderbergh focused on that and avoided placing any scene that would require much acting effort from Carano. In doing so, the movie felt dry and shallow towards the end.

1, 2, Punch

Carano delivers punch per punch as I said above. The fight scenes were cool and believable, and unlike big budgeted thrillers that contain one explosion after another and one car chase scene at least for good measure, Haywire is more of a Jason Bourne movie where the action scenes are stripped down to hand to hand combat.

Most of the tension in the movie comes from the fact that people want to kill Mallory Kane and that every step she takes, they were able to track her and that they beat her up real bad when they get to her. Eventually this ploy loses its effectiveness that at the end, it kind of becomes dull that when Soderbergh tries to pull it off again, it goes flimsy and pointless.

A lot of the problem of with Haywire comes from the fact that Soderbergh failed to make Carano "act" the way an actress would. And while she is not expected to do such, the movie suffers from this fault. Eventually, everyone in the movie ended with 3 emotions: angry, serious, or in pain dying, because if they showed anything more, it would greatly upstage Carano. Another fault was that the characters were poorly developed. Aaron (Tatum) dies and we feel no empathy. As far as Soderbergh suggests, he and Kane only had a one-night stand, yet Soderbergh thought it would be necessary to play a flashback of them kissing to emphasize Kane's sadness from Aaron's passing. Sadly, Soderbergh could've built on this to make this more evocative. But he hasn't and chose to point that out anyways.

Other than those, Haywire is thrilling and would work most of the times. Just don't expect great depths.

My verdict:

A thriller made lame by a surprising lack of emotional range, Haywire works best when it features its fight scenes. A passing mark of 3.5/5.