Directed by:
Steven SoderberghScreenplay:
Lem DobbsCinematography:
Steven SoderberghComposer:
David HolmesCast:
Gina Carano, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton, Antonio Banderas, Michael Angarano, Mathieu Kassovitz (more)Plots(1)
Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) is a highly trained operative working for a government security contractor in the dirtiest, most dangerous corners of the world. After successfully freeing a Chinese journalist held hostage in Barcelona, she discovers the man has been murdered - and all the evidence points to her as the main suspect. Suddenly the target of skilled assassins who know her every trick, Mallory realizes someone deep inside has betrayed her. But who? And why? Far from home and on the run, Mallory executes a series of daring maneuvers to throw the local SWAT team off her trail, only to find herself pursued by far deadlier forces. Crossing multiple international borders, she eludes a powerful web of law enforcement and private operatives until she finds herself left with few options. Increasingly desperate to clear her name and reveal the real traitor, Mallory uses her black-ops military training to devise an ingenious - and dangerous - trap. But when things go haywire, Mallory realizes she’ll be killed in the blink of an eye unless she finds a way to turn the tables on her ruthless adversary. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Videos (32)
Reviews (10)
Haywire wants to be a stylish thriller with a cool heroine, physical action and a clever plot. Instead, it’s just stylish inanity that takes itself too seriously, is too unnecessarily complicated to be a proper chill-out movie and the main character is a violent cold-blooded lesbian about whose fate you don’t really care. A strange pulp hybrid.
()
From Soderbergh, it's actually capital malice. To shoot such simple B-movie misery with such narrative finesse, prudence, but at the same time with moments when Haywire ostentatiously declares the good old era of VHS excavations (iconic shots of the heroine's face, the ending (!!!), meaningless cuts into sharp backlight, etc.). The advantages of the film stand out when you put it in the context of the annoying fashion of female agents (Salt, Colombiana) - Soderbergh irritates, calms, laughs, stays in the intentions of his clinical mode, but this time with a somewhat chill out flavor (elevator music and calm cut give it really long smoke). Haywire is amusing with its nonsense, which it is completely aware of. It's a film that pretends to be the possible beginning of a B-series - but it's too reflectively confident and deliberately subversive for a godless B-movie. It's just Steven's controlled flicker, a fun anecdote that unfortunately didn't go as far as Drive and contented itself with a great deal of uselessness. Paradoxically, I enjoyed this nonsense. [70%] P.S. Gina Carano really has balls, in a bourgeois dress and in the use of choke holds.
()
The only aspect of Haywire that dampens my enthusiasm after watching it is the fact that the very existence of Soderbergh’s film reminds me how much the action genre has been degraded in Hollywood and elsewhere over the past two decades. When an action thriller in which the main character is a woman who, however, does not have to balance her active role in the narrative and her physical dominance in the action scenes through stylisation into a fetishistic object, is made by a director who is said to combine commercial and artistic tendencies in his work and who is considered to be unique in the contemporary film industry, it is more than an alarming message about the current norm against which the given film is defined. Gone are the days when action B-movies were seemingly made on an assembly line in Hong Kong, momentarily making minor stars out of female athletes and stuntwomen (Yukari Oshima, Michiko Nishiwaki, Cynthia Rothrock), and where a condition for achieving stardom was not only good looks, but also physical fitness (Michelle Yeoh, Moon Lee and Cynthia Khan had undergone many years of dance training). The main attractions of those films were the actresses’ physical fitness and their willingness to do all of the stunts themselves. Therefore, various attempts to revitalise or recall this production method in the new millennium teeming with digital effects and dainty models seem extremely counterproductive. The situation in Hollywood is even more dire. Though everybody will recall Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton, it is necessary to recognise that, outside of James Cameron’s iconic films, they didn’t get cast as action heroines anywhere else. Contemporary action films feature model-thin actresses like Milla Jovovich, while stronger, physically fit actresses, athletes and stuntwomen (e.g. Michelle Rodriguez and Zoe Bell) are relegated to supporting roles or “honorary” cameo roles. Gender-based interpretations can hardly be avoided when action heroines can exist only if they simultaneously allow themselves to be dominated by the male gaze as fetishised objects. Haywire (and Soderbergh’s other two films based on the combination of a subject and a performer in a similar environment, The Girlfriend Experience and Magic Mike) clearly demonstrates how much can be added to a film when the action heroine is played by a woman who is truly physically capable and can actually handle all of the action scenes without the use of filmmaking illusions. At the same time, unfortunately, the film’s tepid reception also illustrated the extent to which today’s viewers are accustomed to the contemporary trend consisting in the immersive falsity of the chaotic style used in all current action blockbusters. What was inventive in The Bourne Supremacy unfortunately became a scourge that overwhelmed all contemporary production. The reasons for the proliferation of this style are clear at first glance: it enables films to give the impression of dynamic action while faking depth by engaging performers whose qualities are primarily related to acting, not physical ability (breaking movement down into a mass of miniature fragments so that even the most physically unfit actor can look like an action hero), as well as dramatic directors (action scenes today are allegedly shot mainly by the second unit; with the exception of Michael Bay, there are no A-list directors who specialise in action movies and have their own style). The action film has reached an absurd stage where the audience cannot appreciate the physical attractions that ruled the genre from the 1970s to the end of the millennium, but instead demands a chaotic mish-mash that evokes the impression of insanely dynamic action and money shots enhanced through camerawork and digital effects. Soderbergh points out the audience’s dependence on cinematic deception when, instead of creating chaos through editing and camerawork with raging music, he uses slow motion to show the grace and effectiveness of physical combat in extraordinarily long shots without music. Haywire thus stands apart not only from fake blockbusters, but also from B-movies that, in opposition to the mainstream, are built on the physical skills of the actors and contact action, but often excessively weigh that attraction down with ostentatious visual quirks. At first glance, Haywire seems like an ordinary film, but it is very sad that today it is in fact a completely exceptional work.
()
(less)
(more)
Neither fish nor fowl. Soderbergh built the film on the participation of martial arts champion Gina Carano, and she is great in the action scenes as expected. When character acting is necessary, however, she clearly lags behind. Not that she is horrible, but she does not master the more complex nuances of acting and cannot present her character convincingly. She lacks the charisma that a star in the lead role needs. Soderbergh may have hired a whole range of famous names, but they are just tagalongs. I'm afraid there won't be that many people that Soderbergh will enchant with this because this is neither art nor a B-action movie. One would expect Soderbergh, as a symbol of independent film, to sneak a whole range of other meanings into the film, but it somehow lacks that. Haywire is worth a single watch, but I wouldn't bother a second time. Overall impression: 55%.
()
Of all the action movies in which the female lead character kicks the ass of all the men present that I've had the pleasure to see so far in my life, the thriller Haywire enthralled me the least, therefore, barely at all. I watched it more or less for the decent-sounding cast, but I didn't give a damn about the plot from just a few minutes in. (40%)
()
Ads