Jolting 'Haywire' is Furious yet Frustrating

Director Steven Soderbergh, who helmed the Ocean's 11 franchise, gives us the action/adventure genre in the woman's perspective. The fight choreography and physical talent is amazing and deserves recognition, but is not enough to save the movie in its entirety. To the film's detriment, Soderbergh decided to include the same musical atmosphere as his Ocean's movies, slowing the film down and giving audience members the chance to meditate on why they just spent $12.50 at the theatre.

If you are in the mood to spend the evening watching an action flick filled with intense, riveting sequences of explosions, guns, and copious amounts of blood splatter, helmed by a hot gladiator woman tougher than G.I. Joe, Schwarzenegger, and Wolfman's chem tests combined, you'd best skip this movie. Despite it being advertised as an exciting action thriller, Haywire does little more than put the viewer in a sleeper hold while playing above-average elevator music that fades in and out during long segments of running and punching.

Mallory Kane, played by world-class mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano, is an agent on the run from her employers after they intricately plot to kill her: basically a pawn and chess "thriller" at an elementary level. The overall simple plot line at times gets convoluted in the shady spy-talk, but like most films that cannot explain themselves, the final five minutes are spent regurgitating everything the audience did not see, recapping the events in the bad guy's point of view. In other words, everything is laid out at the end like the conclusion to a standard high school five-paragraph essay.

Although the storyline is linear and expected, the small (and frequent) bouts of fight action and humor make up for the lacking elements. Carano's Kane character is, in simple terms, rebellious. She fights like the boys and holds no prisoners. The fight sequences are nearly poetic with the combined wall climbing, strangleholds, and martial arts skills. Carano throws the punches with fury, but like karma, she gets them right back. Instead of hiding the fighting with tight shots and quick cuts, the audience is given the full bystander experience of witnessing the fight in all its brutal glory. The audience watches as Carano is thrown, punched, shot, and kicked in no fewer than six major scenes. Because the fighting is relatively realistic, the characters' pain is nearly tangible. Props to the filmmakers for giving viewers some of the best hand-to-hand combat seen in recent years. Unfortunately, the filmmakers failed in their execution of stringing all the action segments together. Tedious shots of running and odd jazz music break up the movie and slow it down. For such athletic talent and fantastic urban locations, the unnecessary lulls in plot and motion ultimately detract from the overall excellent style and shots.

What saves the film from itself is the subtle humor sprinkled throughout. Without this humorous element combined with the fights, the movie, in short, would have been quite dull. Thank you, Channing Tatum and Michael Angarano, for throwing out some good laugh-out-loud lines. Don't blink too much, however, as even the funny moments can be easy to miss in the dragged-out scenes.

Overall, Haywire was entertaining. It was not particularly good in terms of storyline and music, but seeing a strong woman beat up hot men instead of seeing a hot man beat up ugly men was, I suppose, refreshing. Just give us some character development, people! Why is Kane (Carano) such a beast-woman? Why does Channing Tatum play such a dumb-jock character in every movie? That aside, if only the pacing had been a little better and the ridiculous amount of running Carano was forced to do was cut down, this film would have been respectively decent. Save the trip to the theatre, but definitely rent it, if only to appreciate the superb fights.