DVD Review: Haywire - Authentic and Well-paced Action Thriller
With the most wafer thin of plots and a refreshingly slender running time, Steven Soderbergh's action-thriller Haywire feels like little more than a star vehicle for its authentic female action star.
rating: 4
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With the most wafer thin of plots and a refreshingly slender running time, Steven Soderbergh's action-thriller Haywire feels like little more than a star vehicle for its authentic female action star: Gina Carano - a former champion mixed martial artist in her first major film role. Its perfunctory story can basically be boiled down to: CIA operative is betrayed by her bosses and becomes determined to get revenge. But this is no bad thing, simply creating a framework in which the star gets to beat up beat up the male-dominated supporting cast in a series a fast, brutal and imaginatively choreographed set pieces - flooring the likes of Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum and Ewan McGregor along the way. As hired killer Mallory Kane, Carano is the most capable and interesting action heroine in recent memory, largely down to the fact that her fighting background lends great authenticity and raw physical power to the violence. This isn't a woman who has to pretend to be capable of flooring muscle-bound hunks like Channing Tatum: it's abundantly clear she could beat the crap out of any of her co-stars here. This also gives director Steven Soderbergh the opportunity to stand back and shoot the action scenes in continuous takes, not having to cut around the action to mask a mixture of stunt doubles and stage fighting - as seen in the Bourne movies. For the most part Soderbergh's camera is unfashionably immobile in a way that seems to question the shaky-cam tendencies of the modern action movie. Bourne may have the edge in terms of intricate plotting and nuanced character development, but he simply can't compete with Miss. Kane in terms of action chops. As with Soderbergh's other recent movies (the Ocean trilogy, Contagion, The Informant!) Haywire again sees the prolific director in world tour mode, with the action taking place across Barcelona, Dublin and San Diego. Happily the locations feel as authentic as the action. This isn't a tourists eye view of the featured cities, but a grimy almost mundane glimpse of high-streets and alleyways. For instance, whilst in Dublin, Carano evades a pursuer by running through the back of a Burger King, emerging opposite an HMV - details so normal and so at odds with the glamour of the traditional spy thriller (shot as they are in natural light and on digital cameras) that they brilliantly compliment Carano as a very grounded and believable action star.