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Haywire Steven Soderbergh must have a thing for breaking new female talents. First he cast adult film star Sasha Grey in his legit film The Girlfriend Experience, and now with Haywire he's cast Mixed Martial Arts phenom Gina Carano.
Either he's got a true eye for talent… or he just wants to nail these chicks. Judging by both those ladies' acting ability… I'm gonna say it was the latter.
Haywire is pretty standard Soderbergh fare. It's got that Soderbergh style, kinda Out of Sight-ish crime movie feel with a swinging acid jazz soundtrack and overall indie movie feel. For a newcomer like Carano, it could totally work, but this movie is chock full of A- listers. I mean, second bill on IMDB is Michael Angarano. Does it get any bigger than that?
In all seriousness, the film features A-list performances from Michael Douglas (Sexy), Antonio Banderas (TOO SEXY), Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender (New Sexy) and Ewan McGregor (Ambiguously Sexy?).
And let's just say this movie needs it. Because when it's all said and done, it's basically the same premise as the USA network show, Burn Notice.
Carano plays Mallory, a badass mercenary working for Kenneth's (McGregor) hit squad. Mallory's team, featuring Aaron (Tatum) have to rescue some journalist in Barcelona. It goes down. It gets real.
But something happens, and uh oh… Mallory gets the Burn Notice because let's face it, spies don't play nice, especially when there's money involved.
(For those of you not in the know, in spy speak, to be "burned" is to be hostilely fired and then usually eliminated because they know too much…).
So then Mallory has got to save her ass, some kid's ass (A-lister Angarano) and then kick just about everybody else's ass while showing off her firm ass. It's Ass-Tastic.
And that's why Haywire was made.
Gina Carano kicks some major ass. She's done it in real life for many years in MMA and I'm almost positive Soderbergh must have just drooled at the thought of the newest female action star. But where Carano and let's say Angelina Jolie (Wanted, Salt) differ is that the 143 lb Carano is actually believable as a threat as opposed to the waifish Jolie.
Carano is a real woman. I know this, because she's got curves. And arms that could definitely get her into any gun show in town.
And when you have lightning like that in a bottle you get a screenwriter to throw together any excuse to have this girl beat up some fools.
Haywire is packed with awesome raw and brutal fights like a Snickers bar is packed with peanuts. Soderbergh does a masterful job shooting these fights because they're all so fast and real and yet not a single punch is missed because it's too close or out of frame.
The other thing worthy of note here is that not once does Carano fight another woman in this film, like every other Hollywood cliché female action film. Carano stands with the big boys and just smacks the smug off their faces. Oh she's bad…. She's nationwide.
The majority of the film is pretty standard fare, nothing you haven't seen, but that's not the selling point. The draw here is Carano and her natural ability as a fighter. In the screening I saw, there was one particularly great fight that when it finished, it literally had the audience cheering. Mostly because I think they were all finally able to take a breath. The story in this film may be ordinary but the hand to hand, all out fisticuffs of this flick are extraordinary.
Carano isn't given much to do script wise, and it's not that big an issue. Nobody is going into Haywire expecting to be dazzled by Carano's delivery of lines and that's okay. Carano, does just enough to let everyone know that there's a new action star in town.
At one point in the movie I was looking at Gina and saying to my buddy, "Wow, they just found a believable star to play Wonder Woman on the big screen."
And later in the movie one of the characters says to Mallory, "Take it easy Wonder Woman."
And I knew right there that we were thinking the same thing.
Haywire is an overall good film with completely bad ass fight scenes that are totally worth seeing. It's also worth seeing in hopes that this will be the first of many Gina Carano action films in the way that Commando was Arnold Schwarzenegger's first big action film (Set in the Modern World of course).
So go out and see Haywire. Because if you don't Gina Carano will come to your summer villa in France and kill you and your girlfriend.
The End.
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