I am partial to thrillers. Shoot, I write thrillers. And in the movie dead zone known as January and February ‘Haywire’ is a good thriller. It is stylish, it is subtle, and its gone in 93 minutes. No lard here. It raises the question— when is a movie star not a movie star? The answer is when the star has previously only been involved in the beat down forum known as mixed martial arts. Steven Soderbergh found her on TV— no not on American Idol or the Voice, on the fight channel! Wow.
Steven Soderbergh is known for his cool cinematography, and this film is representative of the way he approaches his craft. At the center of the film, indeed dominating the film is Gina Carano, and she is impressive, lot least in her ability to kick a lot of bad dude’s rears and take names.
It is interesting that the more well known actors in the film play supporting roles—- Michael Douglas as a federal agent, Michael Fastbender as a secret agent for MI5, Ewan McGregor as a private contractor supposedly doing spying jobs for the government for whom Mallory (i.e. Gina) works.
If you like European locales for spy films, here we have Barcelona and Dublin chiefly, and Soderbergh changes the light and lighting to suit the locale— bright yellow and warm in Barcelona (and also later in Mexico) grey and grainy in rainy Dublin and also in upstate N.Y.
This film is intentionally hard to figure out, until the ‘reveal’ flashback late in the film. The director intends to keep us guessing as to both what is happening, why, and what we should think of Mallory Kane, the daughter of a famous novelist. In its gestalt, the film is somewhat like the Bourne movies, and miles away from Mission Impossible, which seems like fluff in comparison. But a thriller does not have to be or also involve a mystery to be a thriller. Fast and Furious Five is a thriller but the thrills come in the action, the car chases etc. as with Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol.
No so in this film. Yes there is a lot of Gina running around, and the camera sticks to her like glue understandably, with all sorts of interesting camera angles. While there are plenty of flying fists in the film, there are no sexual scenes really. Soderbergh does not use in this film the usual eye candy devices and sexual tricks to keep or peak the audience’s interest, and good for him. The story keeps our interest all by itself.
Haywire a spy film, not ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ spoof. The contrast with some of the Bond films could hardly be clearer— As ‘Kenneth’ her boss tellingly says at one point in the film ‘You should never make the mistake of thinking of Mallory as a woman’, if that is your image of a woman is helpless, feckless, submissive, and unable to win a fist fight with a man. And there are no other women in the film at all to speak of.
Here is a woman succeeding and overcoming in a traditionally male role and world. Indeed, one of the more funny parts of the film really is how Mallory keeps out witting and out fighting the boys….. who seem to never learn that she is armed and dangerous and just plain better at it than they are.
There is a Italian word for this sort of short film— a divertimento, a diversion, an artful dodge. And it is a good one at a time of year when the weather is bleak, the sky is black, and the usual movie fare is bleck as the old cartoons used to say! If you want to see a live wire go haywire and get your mind off your troubles a bit, as I did, seeing this film is an excellent way to accomplish that.
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