Piégée

The story of Haywire is not really appealing. It's about someone tough who got betrayed then wants revenge. It's been used in so many action films. But Haywire has a different purpose to exist. It's about giving Gina Carano her own show with Steven Soderbergh's direction. It's pretty fascinating. Both merits cover the "cookie-cutterness" of the plot. It's not your standard action film with senseless explosions and mediocre dumbness. It's a film with art, style, and action scenes that are ridiculous and realistic. It's short but it's still worth the ride.

The film isn't really trying to be original, big, or loud. Haywire is one of Soderbergh's experiments. The story may not be original but he tells it in a pretty clever way. The first half of the film takes place on a car and shows a lot of flashbacks. The scenes are pretty slick. The action is silent but it's pretty awesome. Gina Carano made every fights dangerously exciting. The other stars does their thing but they don't appear that much. It's one of Soderbergh's trademarks. He casts some big stars but they end up being minor characters. Well, this is Carano's show. It's all about her.

The only thing that disappoints me here is it's too short and there are only few fight scenes. But there are still some action scenes that are pretty exciting like the car chase in New York and the SWAT chase in Dublin were well shot and have a good amount of suspense. The rest of the filmmaking: Well written. The score is fancy. The cinematography and editing are simply art.

Haywire is as simple as it gets. It may not be a fast action blockbuster but it is more interesting than that. It's not quite recommendable to everyone unless you like art films, Soderbergh's directing style, or Gina Carano. No female action star can fight like Gina Carano. It's fun to see her beat up all of these men. Since we are now stuck with action films with mediocre filmmaking, at least we get to see another classy action film like this. But the true core of this film is Gina Carano.