Haywire | Little White Lies

Hay­wire

19 Jan 2012 / Released: 20 Jan 2012

A woman in a black coat walking along a city street, with her hair pulled back and carrying a bag.
A woman in a black coat walking along a city street, with her hair pulled back and carrying a bag.
3

Anticipation.

Soderbergh rallies together another strong A-list ensemble. Damon’s looking a tad bustier than usual, though.

2

Enjoyment.

Formulaic thriller. At least the fight sequences are cool.

2

In Retrospect.

But they’re also tiresomely gimmicky.

Steven Soder­bergh ral­lies togeth­er anoth­er strong A‑list ensem­ble, but the result is sur­pris­ing­ly lacklustre.

If the Coens’ True Grit, Zack Snyder’s Suck­er Punch, Joe Wright’s Han­na and Fincher’s Drag­on Tat­too have taught us any­thing, it’s that today’s movie­go­ers like their action men young, fast and female. The only sur­prise where Hay­wire is con­cerned is that it’s tak­en this long for Steven Soder­bergh to deal from the pack. Still, he’s been a busy boy of late, with pan­dem­ic dra­ma Con­ta­gion and strip­per com­e­dy Mag­ic Mike tight­ly sand­wich­ing this styl­ish but docile thriller.

Hay­wire is a typ­i­cal­ly star-stuffed Soder­bergh affair, with Michaels Angara­no, Dou­glas and Fass­ben­der weigh­ing in along­side the brains of Ewan McGre­gor, the brawn of Chan­ning Tatum, the beard­ed brio of Anto­nio Ban­deras and the fuck yeah, Bill Pax­ton!’ boo-yah of Bill Pax­ton. But it’s Gina Cara­no (aka The Face of Women’s MMA’) as gut­sy black ops free­lancer and recon dar­ling Mal­lo­ry Kane who is most arrest­ing, out­gun­ning her well-strapped male coun­ter­parts at every turn.

After a duplic­i­tous mis­sion in Dublin, where she clash­es with Fassbender’s silky assas­sin in a lung-bust­ing hotel scuf­fle, Mal­lo­ry goes rogue and slips off-radar. Back State­side, she’s quick­ly appre­hend­ed by lantern-jawed for­mer asso­ciate Aaron (Tatum) and, after anoth­er blood­y­ing fra­cas, hits the road in the squirmy com­pa­ny of a bystander (Angara­no) whose wheels she pro­cures. While Mal­lo­ry spills her back-sto­ry in flash­back, the chain of com­mand that set her down­fall in motion starts to fragment.

A few neat piv­ots aside, writer Lem Dobbs (pen­ning his first screen­play since 2001’s The Score) spins a frus­trat­ing­ly ano­dyne nar­ra­tive. All of Soderbergh’s sweat, mean­while, is poured into the sta­t­ic vérité fight sequences that dis­tin­guish Hay­wire from the afore­men­tioned mob.

Cara­no doesn’t need smoke and mir­rors to look the ulti­mate badass, so film­ing each set piece and skir­mish in the style of a Nat Geo­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary is a log­i­cal trick. It’s an aes­thet­ic pref­er­ence that won’t tit­il­late every­one, how­ev­er, and as the nov­el­ty wears off the crush­ing real­i­sa­tion that this is no more than a bloat­ed show­case for a pro­fes­sion­al fight­er poised to hit the big time quick­ly sinks in.

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