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Friday, January 20, 2012
MOVIE REVIEW
Haywire
No Fury Like A Woman's Drop Kick (Come And Get It, Boys!)
The ABCs of Beat Down Central: Gina Carano and Ewan McGregor in Steven
Soderbergh's action drama "Haywire".
Relativity Media
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Friday,
January 20, 2012
Call it the ABCs of BDC aka Beat Down Central. The women in
Steven Soderbergh's
films over the last two decades are hardly wallflowers. The fairer sex --
Laura San Giacomo, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, Ellen Barkin, the lady in
"Bubble", etc. -- all fearlessly verbalized or stood potently on their own
terms. In "Haywire", an action-drama that opened today across the U.S.,
martial arts champion Gina Carano abates the trend somewhat: by speaking softly
and carrying a big kick.
Ms. Carano is Mallory, a shadow operative in an all-male orchestrated
under-the-table government operation gone wrong. She's first in upstate
New York in a film that jumps out of sequence in flashbacks, with a mousy,
innocent bystander of a man (Michael Angarano) who sees a quiet diner suddenly
explode into violence, which sets the tone for the cool, soothing yet shotgun
manner of Mr. Soderbergh's film, efficiently written by his "Limey" screenwriter
Lem Dobbs.
Mallory picks up the pieces to plot her path to vengeance and we see the
isolation of each suspicious or mysterious act that got her into her current
predicament, not once, but often from two or three different perspectives.
We piece together a jigsaw puzzle of betrayal, and a rather entertaining one,
with good work in particular from Antonio Banderas and Ms. Carano.
"Haywire" is always moving in time with the audience even if we don't have all
the information Mallory has at any given moment.
"Haywire" is fueled exclusively by the sleek, feline though muscular Ms. Carano,
a one-time American Gladiator whose first real acting on film here is casual and
not at all bad. She packs a sexy wallop, singlehandedly bringing allure,
charm and physical appeal as accoutrements to her character's razor-sharp
intelligence and ability to adapt quickly. The director's camera works
close in on the principals, effectuating an intimate chronicle of memory and
events that shape and articulate the blunt revenge Mallory seeks. There's
an air of the unexpected, a type of
I-went-to-a-fight-and-a-hockey-game-broke-out fervor that carries through from
start to finish in "Haywire", and you wait for that chaos to arise in what is at
times a tense and suspenseful drama.
In the most serious of films (see
"Contagion") Mr. Soderbergh displays his sly
sense of humor. His heroine in "Haywire" is the source of most of it,
mocking one man whose car she has destroyed, as if both delighting and pitying
the demise of a man's toy. As in last year's "Contagion", "Haywire"
jet-sets to locations around the world: Mallorca, Washington D.C., San Diego and
many others, all given a distinct feel. Space and proximity are often a
factor in contouring the parameters of the heroine's survival, and Mallory makes
the most of every space and each movement when placed in a tight situation.
She improvises -- usually seamlessly. Mr. Soderbergh makes assumptions
about neither his protagonists nor their obstacles, letting the camera he
operates sit and watch what it captures as opposed to tipping its hand too much
cinematically.
The director's avenger is no angel or waif. Mallory is tough, fierce and
exacting, while remaining a lady. She'd have
David
Fincher's Lizbeth Salander for breakfast and
Angelina Jolie's
Lara Croft for dinner. As it is, Mallory's metaphorical lunch hour --
which is just a little shorter than "Haywire" -- is spent dining on fight feasts
full of A-list male actors. Michael Douglas plays a wise, wary
governmental father-figure to her (Bill Paxton plays Mallory's real dad) as
Mallory racks up takedowns of men in tight spaces and in powerful, violent
bursts. The film's realistic fight choreography mixes sexuality and
ferocity in a balletic way. Mallory devastates her male competition and
when a killing occurs, is on the run for her very life.
"Haywire" is about the human dominoes that fall and the male domination that
wilts when a woman has been wronged. The dominoes sometimes fall the wrong
way, but they always fall when the renegade Mallory wants them to.
That's power, and admittedly it's fun to see a woman beat up a man on the
big screen, not for masochistic reasons but purely because outside of films like
"La Femme Nikita" and "G.I. Jane" in the last 20 years or so, such beatings
haven't been seen much on film.
Those boys who think they can get away with the dangerous games they play on
women better look over their shoulder. Mallory plays chess, physically and
mentally, and like many of her sex, is always six moves ahead of the smartest
man in whichever town or situation she finds herself in.
With: Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Julian Alcaraz.
"Haywire" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of
America for some violence. The film's
running time is one hour and 33 minutes.
COPYRIGHT 2012. POPCORNREEL.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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