Haywire (Steven Soderbergh, 2012)

[ianungstad]

This movie was mildly entertaining but it needed a better lead actress and another trip to the editing suite. The plot is pretty simple but the characters are so ill-defined and thin which combined with the generic setup leaves the film feeling muddled. Gina Carano gives a pretty wooden performance and seems very uncomfortable in scenes with more than a few lines of dialog. Soderbergh did a far better job with this kind of material in the Ocean movies. I would avoid this movie and just rent Contagion on video on demand instead. The second half of Haywire is much stronger than the first half and there's enough plot twists and action that I don't think anyone would be bored with this film but the results are pretty middling.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I guess the main draws are the cast, fighting, Carano, and Banderas' beard

The retro score by David Holmes ain't too shabby either.

Yes! Very true. I quite enjoyed it myself.

[Dona Santa]

I was pretty bored. I like Soderbergh's idea of shooting action and it was nice to see the coherency and no rapid cutting but overall aside from the opening it was all underwhelming and felt "too choreographed" as in Carano is somewhat breaking a fourth wall with her MMA moves that should have been masked somehow. I expected more dirty street fighting style a la They Live which would have been great. Oddly enough though I liked the silence between scenes and the dubbing.... it brought a weird sort of atmosphere to the straight forward narrative. The last scene with Rodrigo I enjoyed quite a bit too.

[Mr. Ned]

Soderbergh was definitely going through the motions on this one. The lighting, camera movement, and pacing felt habitual to the point of tedium. I think a lot of people have been too harsh on Carano. She performed pretty well, but Soderbergh's post-production tampering of his voice probably helped a lot. The fighting scenes were a great mixture of brutality and finesse. The sunrise fist-fight on the beach was lovingly crafted, and I got a perverse sort of glee seeing Fassbender get choked out. This was all style and no substance, though; Douglas, Bandera and McGregor had nothing to work with, and Tatum stumbled around looking lost as always. Paxton, on the other hand, was exceptional. Outside of the Dublin sequence, however, nothing to write home about. I'm looking forward to Magic Mike.

[knives]

She's a her not a him.

[J Adams]

I think he tampered with her gender too.

[Mr. Ned]

I mean, he lowered her voice how many octaves? There's got to be some sort of implicit critique on the gendered-ness of hand-to-hand combat in there somewhere!

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

Casting Carano allowed Soderbergh to stage fight scenes with a wider field and fewer cuts; it's an interesting instance where casting affects editing and mise-en-scène. There is a greater sense of her going to work, or doing her daily job, when she fights that not only makes it more natural, but also reinforces the no-nonsense determination of her role. Her performance was not bombastic or strained, but I don't think it was wooden, either; or else, not to the point that it detracted from the film's impact. In fact, I think her performance was all of a piece with the slow burn of the film's tone; perhaps the dubbing added to this impression as well. Flat performances are often effective (cf. Bresson actors), and to criticize her delivery on the basis that it wasn't "professional" would be tantamount to criticizing Fassbender for attempting to fight as a non-professional; certainly to fighters, his performance could not hide the fact that he is not a fighter. But neither one's amateur status matters that much. Again, surrounding Carano with name actors highlights the contrast and forces the viewer to consider the nature of professionalism. (It's also fun to imagine a bunch of hunky actors being schooled by an amateur actress on the set during a fight scene.)

I would also like to give another nod to David Holmes' score, which not only had a retro funk, but also matched the simmering tone of the film. Notice how quiet it is during the first action sequence when the team arrives at the safehouse.

EDIT: double negative

[J Adams]

Umm, what fight scenes. The opening fight is like 10 seconds. There was the blurry scene in Spain where she kicked someone once or twice. The Fassbender was a fight scene--it was fine but had plenty of cuts. The scenes at the end involved minimal "fighting". I guess I slept through all the others.

Justify this film somehow, but not by the fight scenes. Even MI:4 had better fight scenes.

[matrixschmatrix]

Justify this film somehow, but not by the fight scenes. Even MI:4 had better fight scenes.

Yes someone jump through hoops to craft an opinion J Adams will accept! J Adams demands it!

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

Umm, what fight scenes. The opening fight is like 10 seconds. There was the blurry scene in Spain where she kicked someone once or twice. The Fassbender was a fight scene--it was fine but had plenty of cuts. The scenes at the end involved minimal "fighting". I guess I slept through all the others.

Justify this film somehow, but not by the fight scenes. Even MI:4 had better fight scenes.

I have no interest in justifying the film, rest assured! (I'm not even sure I understand what that means; it sounds like something better left to the Epistles.) While I agree there were more cuts in the Fassbender fight, I think if you compare it to most disorienting fight scenes in western espionage films, for example, in which the cascade of shots embedded in one motion creates a false impression of speed and strength--to the point where a single kick's motion, in less than a second, jumps across several camera angles--Soderbergh allows the fight to breathe a little more by limiting those cuts (and not intruding those comic-panel-inspired freeze-frame moments that became fashionable after The Matrix); and I don't think an actress who wasn't a professional fighter could have put this over as easily and naturally. Also, fights don't need to be long to be impressive, regardless of what Hong Kong films seem to tell us: I've seen MMA fighters go down in less than ten seconds.

Dagger fights on the other hand... those should be long, bloody, and grim.

[J Adams]

The film was marketed as a fight film with a professional fighter "non-actress" who would FIGHT better than an actress because she is a professional FIGHTER. There are 4 fight scenes, 3 of which are extremely brief (one blurry/murky to boot) and one of those 4 IMHO isn't even a fight, more a slap scene. I'm fine with 10 second fight scenes, but you need about 40 of those to qualify this as a FIGHT film.

The degree of cutting in the Fassbender fight was not significantly less than a standard Hollywood fight--not enough to make it special in any way.

I thought the film was watchable BTW (mostly due to its brevity), just disappointing. And any film where Fassbender gets foughten is by definition worth seeing.

I'm not trying to start a fight BTW.

EDIT: I just looked at the trailer and, yep, all 4 fight scenes are in there (plus one implied faux-fight scene). Virtually in their entirety, except the Fassbender.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

I'm not trying to start a fight BTW.

But if you are, let's make sure we live up to the marketing and draw it out!
All kidding aside, I wasn't aware of the marketing campaign, so perhaps you are right, and audience expectations were unfairly defeated; I don't think Soderbergh was going for a generic fight movie, and based on what you're saying, it sounds like advertisements gave the lie to his intentions.

[matrixschmatrix]

I finally got to see this, and I really enjoyed it. The complaint that there wasn't enough fighting seems ludicrous- the movie is built around lengthy scenes that culminate in major fights, and drawing those fights out longer would have ruined the sense of real damage that the hits conveyed. Carrano was fine, obviously cast for her physicality but well cast in that regard, and of course all the ringers were great.

I did think Channing Tatum seemed oddly amateurish, even compared to the actual amateur- and Carrano was never worse than in the opening scene opposite him. Outside of that, I got exactly the stylish, entertaining Bourne-esque action movie I was looking for.

[knives]

Funny I didn't even notice it was Tatum until the New Mexico sequence. Than again I didn't recognize Paxton period (who gave maybe my favorite performance of the film), but Carano really stood out like a sore thumb to me. Soderbergh has a radically different way of directing non professionals and professionals that clashed hard here which is unfortunate as I thought this was Dobbs best screenplay.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

I did think Channing Tatum seemed oddly amateurish, even compared to the actual amateur- and Carrano was never worse than in the opening scene opposite him. Outside of that, I got exactly the stylish, entertaining Bourne-esque action movie I was looking for.

I really liked Tatum's delivery; it was a little eccentric, but I thought it gave him a weird casualness that belied his character's physical expertise. It made him almost childlike, which makes a kind of sense, given what befalls him.

Carano really stood out like a sore thumb to me. Soderbergh has a radically different way of directing non professionals and professionals that clashed hard here which is unfortunate as I thought this was Dobbs best screenplay.

I think you're right, but as I mentioned above, I believe he has intentionally heightened these differences for effect. It's his current project to feature amateur actors who are more specifically relevant to their roles through a vocation other than acting; this calls into question the presumed authenticity of "good" acting and the belief that actors can inhabit identities that are utterly foreign to them. Perhaps what we consider good acting is a uniform manner that too often disregards professional backgrounds, socioeconomic factors, etc.

[knives]

I would agree with that, but at times it does seem like Soderbergh succeeds in melding her acting with the others. I thought it was an attempt to meld his directing styles together given my experience. Eventually he does succeed on that front, but it took about 40 minutes to get there. I agree that it calls into question what is good acting (as does his previous works with unprofessionals), but I found the experiment more of a personal test than a statement.

[mfunk9786]

Man, this film has disappeared from theaters overnight. It only came out on the 20th, and it's now only playing at two nearby theaters, only a late night show or an awkward mid-afternoon show. A shame - did it really do that badly at the box office?

[knives]

16.6 mil (with over half of that on opening weekend) on a 23 mil budget.

[mfunk9786]

It'll be interesting to see if I can even manage to see it in the theater now. I obviously have no one but myself to blame, but I figured it'd be around longer than two weeks.

[Alan Smithee]

16 on 23's not bad, could break even in America, followed by foreign and DVD, that's pretty good.

[mfunk9786]

Soderbergh has been on quite the run since his failed experiment The Girlfriend Experience, and Haywire is no exception. I hadn't the faintest clue who Gina Carano was before this film, but I hope casting directors realize that they have the female Jason Statham on their hands. Carano manages to be charming and beautiful throughout the film, even while keeping together a steely performance that is exactly what her character needed to be for this film to succeed. There is not one moment in which she seemed nervous with the idea of performing the lead role in a major motion picture - and there aren't a lot of first time actors who can make a similar claim. Soderbergh directs with confidence, with the intention to make an action film that is not a frenetic cut-and-close-up-a-thon (hyphens!) but rather one that plays like one of the Bourne or Crank films if the producers insisted that the director swear off caffeine throughout the duration of the shoot. I guess my one fault would be one I've had with Soderbergh films past - we're thrust into a rather complicated scenario without a lot of coherence to the story until the end - but hey, it's an excuse to watch Haywire again, so I'm not complaining!

[knives]

The Girlfriend Experiment was not a failure and I personally thought it better than this though there's enough wiggle room to where those not annoyed by Carano I see how it could tip either way.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Carano manages to be charming and beautiful throughout the film, even while keeping together a steely performance that is exactly what her character needed to be for this film to succeed.

This sums up exactly what made her presence and performance work so well for me. In addition, she played it so well that I was confident that she was smarter than her antagonists.

[matrixschmatrix]

Yeah, she exuded confidence at least as well as most of the male bodybuilders or whatever turned action stars that I've seen, and I feel as though that and physical skill are the two key elements to a good performance in this kind of movie.