Haywire - It's Not... I Mean... Ya Know... Blah

To All Of You Who Complained "There Is No Way Angelina Jolie Could Beat All Those Guys Up In Salt, It's Just Too Unbelievable" I Give You Gina Carrano

Haywire (Level IV)

I almost started titled this "Yes, Gina Carrano is hot, but..." then I realized that is the way I titled Columbiana and since Zoe Saldana is hotter than Gina Carrano (both beautiful, I just prefer Zoe) it seemed a bad way to start this one. It's funny that my original thought would be to use the same opening, because in a lot of ways they are movies with similar strengths and weaknesses -- the main strength being how well the female star performs in action sequences. While the makers of Columbiana rightly made Zoe Saldana sneaky and graceful (like a cat burglar, which is why she would have made a great Catwoman) Soderberg can do something with Gina Carrano that no director has really been able to do before with a female lead -- put her in straight ahead, hand to hand fights with male stars and have her believably kick their collective asses (for the few that don't know Gina Carrano was a world champion MMA fighter). Frankly, there is a power to her fighting, her punching and her kicking that few male hollywood action stars can come close to duplicating, so much so that when she fights Ewan McGregor near the end of the movie your only thought is "he wouldn't last three seconds against her" and you feel your suspension of disbelief crumbling when the fight goes on for a few minutes. It's not just the fighting of course, it is everything about the way she moves. She's an athlete and therefore moves with a certain physical self confidence that is hard to duplicate, and it works well in her role as a freelance spy.

So if Gina Carrano in action and motion is the movies undeniable strength, where is it lacking? Critics have pointed to a lot of the issues, like:

• Gina Carrano is great in action sequences and out of her depth when she just has to act (true to a degree, although I think she was good enough generally)
• It was almost too Soderberg-ish, his "Oceans" style having too completely taken over the way he films action (true to a degree, particularly during a kidnapping early on that feels exactly like an Oceans 13 sequence, but I don't think anyone can claim a director as talented as Soderberg ruined a movie)
• None of the male leads seemed overly invested in the movie and it felt almost like they were dropping their games so they wouldn't show up Gina Carrano (true to a degree, there was certainly a general aloofness and a dispassion to most of the performances, almost to a fault, but they were spies after all and aren't spies supposed to be aloof and dispassionate?)
• No one did anything that clever and they all did things, or didn't do obvious things, that would have put an end to the plot rather quickly (true to a degree, although I could make that statement about a lot of spy thrillers, even good ones. They all lean often lean on plot devices that require a real suspension of disbelief and even logic)

I could go on and on, but the truth is none of those are the real problem (in medical terms they are the symptoms not the cause). The real problem is that this movie never does the one thing an action thriller must do (really, any movie must do), it never successfully brings you into the world. I don't know why but you always feel like you are watching a movie, watching people act, and never that you are watching a story unfold. And what happens if you aren't transported into the story? You start seeing all of the little things that you would usually ignore. You notice Gina Carrano's "acting". You notice things like, if they had the connections to have the entirety of Dublin's SWAT team to chase our hero, why didn't you call them in to get her when she was sitting in her hotel room trying to decide what to do, instead of waiting until she was on the street and could get away. You recognize the Fasbender is lacking the intensity he usually has when acting in action movies or why, when Gina Carrano has already figured out Fasbender's a bad guy, that she casually walks into a secluded room in front of him allowing him to hit her from behind. Plot holes jump out at you, the warts of performances become obvious, and the movie almost crumbles under the scrutiny of eyes that will no longer go along for the ride.

I'm sure you all have movies like this that you remember. Movies that you can't quite put your finger on why it didn't work, but it just didn't work (Russell Crowe's Robin Hood was that way). Sadly that is Haywire. I sincerely hope another director will give Gina Carrano one more chance at the action star thing, because for all of those problems I would still watch it again to see her fight (well, I would fast forward to the fight sequences, I wouldn't sit through the rest of it again).

But, that's just my opinion. And, as always, what do I know, I'm fat.