Movies Reviews

Haywire – Movie Review

By Anne Brodie Jan 20, 2012, 20:30 GMT

Mallory Kane (Carano) is a highly trained operative who works for a government security contractor in the dirtiest, most dangerous corners of the world.  After successfully freeing a Chinese journalist held hostage, she is double crossed and left for dead by someone close to her in her own agency.  Suddenly the target of skilled assassins who knew her every move, Mallory must find the truth in order to stay alive. ...more

American Gladiators mixed martial arts star Gina Carano is a force of nature in the assassin-for-hire thriller Haywire. Known as the “face of women’s mixed martial arts”, Carano is a lone wolf black ops super soldier and operative and a radical feminist making her way in the world with only one man she trusts – her father. 

Otherwise, she is surrounded by powerful and cunning agents, all men, capable of carrying out their murderous agendas with the blessing of various governments and agencies without benefit of conscience.  She’s alone, answerable to no one and protected by no one and is entirely able to put her conscience on hold. 

She’s a remarkable character in contemporary films as physical as any superstar spy/fighter.  Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt, John McLane, you have been warned.
Seems the filmmakers may not have trusted her entirely to pull off the role of Mallory Cane because they’ve surrounded her with an inordinate number of male heavy hitters for a film like this – Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Tatum Channing, even Michael Douglas.  They needn’t have worried.  Carano is skilled, beautiful; she can act, kill it, bring it home and fry it for dinner.

Cane meets with someone she knows from some sort of dark past, someone she doesn’t trust, in an upstate New York diner. Within moments they’re thrashing the tar out of each other –quite skilfully. 

She escapes, hijacking a young trucker and driving away as she tells the guy the incredible story of how she got there, via Barcelona, Dublin, Paris with dead bodies in her wake and danger on her tail.  She gives him a list of names and places to remember to tell her story later on.

It started with an assignment in Spain to free a hostage, a violent assignment she shares with Channing that offers quite the showcase of her awesome martial arts skills.  Skip to her home near San Diego where she’s unpacking and preparing for some time off, when one of her contractors, and former lover (McEwan) asks her to do a final two night assignment that would be pretty much a holiday.  She agrees.

She’s in Dublin and enters Michael Fassbender as an agent posing as her husband.  The second their door closes behind them, he savagely attacks her and she gives it right back, instinctively, no reaction time elapses. Thus begins the most dangerous cycle of the story and the sickening realization that she has been betrayed by her former lover.

Carano’s physical might is quite breathtaking.  There’s a fantastic moment where she crawls up a wall backwards and leaps forward to disable an opponent – her speed, response, strength and quick witted execution is beyond the scope of a Bourne or Hunt.  They’re actors, fighting; she’s the real thing, acting.

Unfortunately, this niche will probably limit her acting opportunities, but as far as her performance goes, she’s got it.  I didn’t doubt her motivation or intention for a second and what she accomplished as a storyteller is dead on.

Kudos to Soderbergh for finding this feminist character to play in an iconic genre and to find this woman in particular, it’s the icing on the cake.  Carano’s so powerful; she demands our attention in every frame.  Soderbergh’s direction is as stylish as ever, but not so stylized that it removes us from our lead.

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35mm action drama
Written by Lem Dobbs
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Opens: Jan. 20
Runtime: 93 minutes
MPAA:  Rated R for some violence
Country: US
Language: English