Review by Stuart Barr
Stars Gina Carano, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbinder, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Angarano, Bill Paxton, Mathieu Kassovitz
Written by Lem Dobbs
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 92 minutes
Directed by Stephen Soderberg
Mallory Kane (Carano) is a former US Marine working for a private security firm. At the beginning of Haywire Kane walks into a roadside diner to wair for Kenneth (McGregor), who runs the firm. However, he doesn’t show; instead, another security operative, Aaron (Tatum), is sent in his place to retrieve her. There is some dark talk about Barcelona and Dublin, so clearly a job went bad. Aaron isn’t terribly interested and throws his coffee in her face, so Kane kicks the total crap out of him and absconds with a hostage, Scott (Angarano, most recently seen in Red State).
Scott just happens to have bought a very fast rally car a few weeks before. On the run with the terrified young man, Kane relates the story of how she came to be in the diner. There’s an extraction, a double cross and a setup. But Kane is very good at her work and out-kicks everyone in her path. In the process she becomes a pawn in the machinations of a Washington player Coblenz (Douglas), who is trying to mount a counter sting operation against Kenneth and his firm. He is trying to find the man behind the man, so to speak.
I had to sleep on this film before writing my review, just to be able to separate the sources of the fury and rage it induced in me. You see, Haywire is not a good film. You will have people telling you that it is, but it really isn’t. This isn’t just my opinion, it’s a demonstrable fact – that is, unless you don’t think things like character, empathy, or plot have any place in an action film. In which case, fine, knock yourself out. Or rather let Carano knock you out, as she is pretty much the only person in the film to impress. However, although Haywire is not a good film, it isn’t an awful one either. It’s competently shot (no more). the action scenes are decently choreographed, and Carano has the moves.
On the negative, it would be giving the plot too much credit to call it nonsense, it is simply a loose collection of standard spy movie cliches strung together. The dodgy private contractor; the sinister foreigners (ie non Americans) with funny accents; the shady government guy; the double cross; the rooftop chase; the street artists the hero must knock over; the bit were the guy in the mac is stalking the hero; jumping in cabs; etc, etc. It isn’t challenging enough for Soderberg to simply try and tell the story in a linear fashion, so he starts in the middle and then has Kane kidnap a civilian for no apparent purpose but to relate the set up in a series of flashbacks.
Kane’s entire character story is that she is an ex marine, has an ex marine dad (Paxton) who tells her to “watch your six”, and has bad taste in men. That’s it. Jason Bourne she isn’t. In fact Bourne at the beginning of The Bourne Identity when he’s floating in the Mediterranean half dead, is a more interesting character.
Obviously the cast is amazing, but if Carano’s character is slight, she has the depth of Lady Macbeth in comparison to Banderas’ Spanish guy who strokes his beard, Tatum’s big dude with gun who drinks beer, Kassovitz’s sinister Frenchman, and McGregor’s villain with a grudge against Kane because she dumped him. And McGregor is doing that American accent again, y’know, the one that makes you forget how good he can be when he isn’t doing it. Only Fassbinder just about makes an impression, mainly because his fight scene is the standout sequence of the film (and it still isn’t half as good as the Morocco fight in The Bourne Ultimatum). Fassbinder plays a British intelligence agent in a tuxedo with a posh accent, Carano kicks him in the balls. It’s like a victory for women over Bond, and the only bit of the film where I was moderately interested.
Carano is a former professional mixed martial artist once ranked the number 3 145 pound female fighter in the world (thank you Wikipedia). There has been a minor controversy in the US over some apparent tinkering with the pitch of her voice which is probably baloney. She is very impressive in Haywire, she holds her own in the dramatic scenes, and is completely convincing kicking seven shades of crap out of a succession of much larger men. I’d like to see her facing off against some opponents who were equally skilled in the future. At the end of the film she sports a wetsuit and utility belt outfit and looks a hell of a lot more like the Black Widow than Scarlett Johansson.
So why the fury?
Simply put I have already seen rave reviews from respectable critics arguing that the lack of plot and character does not matter with this film (Todd McCarty in The Hollywood Reporter for example). Well bullshit guys. This is exactly the sort of stuff used to dismiss Jason Statham films, but hey, it’s Soderberg, he makes films not movies, so it’s suddenly a positive. This is rank critical hypocrisy. It’s also not fair, frankly Jason Statham would have chucked the script for Haywire in the bin for lacking sufficient character development. There is actually more of it in The Expendables.
Haywire, a film in which people you don’t care about do stuff that isn’t very interesting, with some decent fight scenes. If that sounds like a great Friday night movie to you, then you are welcome to it.