Haywire (2011)

I'd never really heard of Gina Carano before she was cast in Haywire. She's quite a famous mixed martial artist and I reasoned that her skills in the ring should translate well into an action film. Director Steven Soderbergh, perhaps conscious of her lack of acting experience, surrounded her with A-list talent: Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas and Bill Paxton.

The story's simple enough: covert operative Mallory Kane (Gina Caruso) works for Kenneth (Ewan McGregor) and his private company. US government official Coblenz (Michael Douglas) and his Spanish contact Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas) hire them to rescue a man being held captive in Barcelona. She and Aaron (Channing Tatum) do so and she is sent to Dublin on another mission with Paul (Michael Fassbender). When the man she rescued turns up dead, she is framed for his murder and must go on the run, seeking to clear her name, protect her father (Bill Paxton) and take revenge on those who blah, blah, blah. It's your typical action movie plot and it's not too taxing.

The film opens in a diner. Mallory meets Aaron and beats the shit out of him, with the assistance of some bystander called Scott (Michael Angarano). They flee in his car and she then proceeds to tell him what's happened to her and how she was framed for murder. The film unfolds mostly through flashbacks: the initial mission in Barcelona, her trip to Dublin with Paul, how she worked out Kenneth had set her up and her return to the United States where she anticipated meeting Kenneth in the diner they just left. She and Scott are eventually captured by the police but manage to escape as Kenneth's men attempt to ambush them. She sends Scott on his way and makes her way to her father's house for the final showdown with those who betrayed her.

This film utterly baffled me. It has an ass-kicking martial artist beating people up, a stellar cast and a simple premise and yet it still managed to be mind-numbingly boring. It doesn't help that the soundtrack is awful. It completely kills the atmosphere as it alternates between total silence for long stretches and loud, thoroughly inappropriate music during others. As Mallory and Paul get ready to go to a party, they do so in total silence. Soderbergh was clearly trying to build some tension here. Sexual? Dramatic? Either way, it comes off as stilted and awkward. When Mallory's being chased through the streets of Dublin, nothing happens as she just wanders around for several minutes in complete silence. She finally starts running and this peppy, upbeat jingle starts playing. I burst out laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it. The ten minutes she spends aimlessly running around and jumping across rooftops to avoid the Irish police are completely infuriating. Soderbergh obviously blew the budget on the A-listers so he can't afford to have more than two SWAT police on screen at any one time and it's clearly always the same two. We're almost an hour into the film at this point and there have been three fight scenes, one of them in Barcelona that laughably finished when she threw a flimsy metal platter at the guy's back. The other two, against Aaron and Paul, weren't bad but they suffer for being mostly in silence, but for Carano's loud grunts of "oosh" every time she hits someone. It brings to mind professional wrestlers making loud noises to cover up the fact that they aren't really hitting each other and it just cheapens everything. Soderbergh went for toned down and naturalistic, hoping for something akin to the Bourne films. Well, Bourne it ain't. The three fight scenes aside, the first hour is surprisingly free of action. She spends more time hanging around her apartment and at a party in a nice dress than she does doing anything else and it only serves to make the film drag.

Ultimately, she escapes from the police in Dublin by putting her hood up. No, I'm not joking. Fleeing to London, she makes her way to New York and the diner where she runs into Scott. All caught up on the backstory, the film plods onwards. Unfortunately, it doesn't get much better. They're caught by the police when they have the most laughable collision with a deer I've ever seen in my life. I won't spoil it because it's so bad it really has to be seen to be believed. Mallory escapes from the police and Kenneth's goons and heads to New Mexico to protect her father from her former employer. It should get interesting but it doesn't. It's still painfully boring. There's half an hour left but instead of cramming it full of action to make up for the action-free first hour, Ewan McGregor spends half of it talking to Bill Paxton about god only knows what, Michael Douglas, who spends most of the film sat behind a desk, speaks to practically every other character on the phone and the final fight between Kenneth and Mallory lasts half as long as his infuriatingly dull exposition detailing why she was set up.

The only reason to watch this film is if you're a fan of Ms. Carano. She's nice to look at and does all her own stunts but her fight scenes are surprisingly dull and she can't really do much else. She methodically reads her lines like they're in front of her on a teleprompter and her facial expressions were clearly prompted by Soderbergh calling out things to her from off-camera. Watch for the moment in the diner when she suddenly becomes resolved. With such an array of acting talent at his disposal and Carano's ass-kicking skills clearly evident, why Soderbergh chooses to waste both is a complete mystery. Fassbender's in the film for ten minutes, Banderas fifteen and Paxton and Tatum get about the same. Ewan McGregor, normally dependable, is obviously going through the motions. It doesn't help that his antagonist is called "Kenneth". Perhaps if Soderbergh hadn't spent so much money bringing the supporting cast in to try and paper over Carano's limitations as an actress, he could have afforded to stage some more action scenes which would have actually shown off her talents!

Recommended only for the chronically sleep-deprived, this film will have you yawning your head off and counting the seconds until the credits roll. Boring, boring, boring.

2 out of 10.