MOVIE REVIEW: HAYWIRE...

HAYWIRE, (2012), produced by Relativity Media and the Irish Film Board, directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Lem Dobbs and starring Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton and Antonio Banderas.  Rated "R" for violence.  Run time of 93 minutes.

Truthfully, this film was a disappointment for me.  The trailer look so good and with Sonderbergh as a director (TRAFFIC) I figured this was going to be a really decent 'action' film, maybe even a 'kick-ass' film.  While I liked the female lead, Gina Carano, the truth is the pacing of the film is altogether t-o-o.....s-l-o-w.  I had read reviews where it was compared to some of the Bourne movies in terms of its 'action' and drama.

I must have seen a different set of Bourne movies because they moved at the speed of light compared to the speed of this thing.

Gina Carano is a mixed martial arts champion and the truth is she is pretty good as the 'private' operator hired by some mysterious government agency to rescue a kidnapped journalist.  (Yeah, Like that would happen.)  The conflict comes into play when she set up and double crossed, specifically why and by whom is somewhat problematic throughout the film.

Obviously, Carano isn't going to challenge Meryl Streep for character engagement or conveying emotion, but its obvious from her moves and movement, she knows how to fight.  I mean she really knows how to move and fight.  (I'm not so impressed with her gun handling, but I guess you can't have everything.)  To every one's credit she does her on screen roles without sinking to sensational nakedness or nudity.  She portrays what she is and that is a tough as nails human being.  Well done, now if the rest of the film had moved as well as she did, there wouldn't be any problems, but there is.

For one thing the plot is incomprehensible.  It starts in the middle, goes back to the beginning, back to the middle and then returns to the end of the 1st act.  I know I'm hard of hearing, but the sound is atrocious, or at least it was in the theater I attended as half the time I didn't know what was being said.  (For that reason alone, I might rent it when it comes out on DVD and use the English sub-titles, just so I can understand what I missed.)

The gun stuff was okay.  There may have been some hiccups that I missed.  I wasn't paying that much attention because I was concentrating so hard on what they were saying and my lip reading really wasn't up to speed.  I will say at times I found the musical sound track disorienting and the music didn't match the scenes at all.

But it was the thin plot and especially the pacing of the whole thing that threw me off.  I'm not a member of the attention deficit crowd and therefore I enjoy a story that moves of its own pace, but this wasn't that kind of story.  This was an action adventure and we don't need lasting looks, pauses and glances.  Just Git It On, Girl!  As for connecting the dots, the producers, the story writer and the director could have done a better job of establishing the dots that needed to be connected.  As it is, it's pretty thin and one has to suspend belief when in broad daylight multiple state police officers are gunned down, but our heroine easily escapes.  Right.

In many ways, Carano is a female version of Chuck Norris and for that reason I'm sure she will prove to be the fantasy woman of many pre-teen and teenage boys.  She could also work for an old fart in his 60's, but she is going to have to do better than turkeys like this if she wants to avoid becoming a fantasy caricature.


I give HAYWIRE 2 bullets out of a cylinder of 6...

All The Best,
Frank W. James