Haywire stars MMA
& Muay Thai champion Gina Carano as a spy-for-hire who finds herself
trapped in an espionage thriller made by people who appear to have no love for
the genre.
We’ve all seen plenty of action thrillers headlined by women
who look like they couldn’t hurt a fly.
I like waif-fu as much as the next guy, but let’s face it: force equals
mass times acceleration. I had a
great time watching wafer-thin Zoe Saldana beat up grown men in Colombiana,
for instance, but at no time did I believe her punches would actually
hurt. Gina Carano, on the other
hand, is no waif: she looks like she knows her way around a steak dinner, she
moves like the trained and experienced fighter she is, and I didn’t have to
forcibly suspend my disbelief to accept her besting her foes.
Problem is, she’s a terrible actress. Director Steven Soderbergh puts her
onscreen with people like Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor,
Bill Paxton, and Michael Fassbender, and she comes across as wooden and
overmatched. I believed her when
she was in action, but I couldn’t believe her when she was setting up the
situations and motivations that put her in action.
And the action itself?
It isn’t much fun. In fact,
it feels like it was made by people who felt they were slumming. The music just sits there, the fights
are poorly edited, the double and triple crosses carry no heft, and the
production has no sense of joy.
Compare Haywire with, say, Tai Chi Master. Tai
Chi Master is standard wuxia fare, but it’s made by people who love
wuxia. There’s an exuberance in
the stunt work, the music, the performances, the editing, that you just won’t
find in Haywire.
Look, I like action pictures. I enjoy good fight choreography, I like fireballs as much as
the next guy, and I’m a sucker for a good chase scene. But you’ve got to meet me half way. You’ve got to cast a lead who can
act. You’ve got to give your
picture a sense of urgency and propulsion. You’ve got to love the genre. Haywire doesn’t, so
I’m marking it down as one of Soderbergh’s failures.
