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.

Didn't expect much from this other than Soderbergh's involvement. The film has its flaws, but it is quite entertaining nevertheless. Gina Carano shines as she is truly an authentic protagonist .

The problems with HAYWIRE can be laid firmly at the door of director Steven Soderbergh, who is entirely unsuited to directing what should be a pulse-pounding thriller. Soderbergh's light 'n' breezy, art-house-style direction is at odds with the kind of gritty, realistic, down 'n' dirty vibes he's aiming for here, and the result is an oddly unrewarding movie that goes through the motions, ticks all of the boxes, and yet fails to make any impact on the viewer whatsoever. Although it looks good, it turns out to be a hollow, slightly soulless exercise in movie-making.

The good thing about HAYWIRE are the martial arts scenes: they're very well filmed, highly exciting and utilise to full advantage the skills of real-life mixed martial arts fighter and lead Gina Carano. Having recently rewatched the BOURNE trilogy (in preparation for the upcoming BOURNE LEGACY), I can acknowledge they're the equal of anything in those movies. However, it's the long, slow passages in-between the action that really cause this film to stall. Soderbergh shoots them in his usual way, with jazzy music playing in the background and subdued, quick-fire dialogue, and while that worked in the likes of THE LIMEY and OCEAN'S ELEVEN, it just doesn't here.

The whole exercise feels artificial, and you get the impression that Soderbergh is trying too hard. There's no palpable tension, no sense of build-up, no suspense about what's going to happen to the protagonist. In fact, it's all rather boring, and you're left itching for the next fight scene to take place. Compare this with THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, in which I was on the edge of my seat during the non-action bits, caught up in an involved conspiracy storyline, unable to wait to find out what was going to happen next. HAYWIRE flatlines between the martial arts antics.

The script doesn't help; it's on the level of the average Seagal DTV actioner, and makes some truly odd decisions (like highly skilled/unbeatable agent Carano telling her life story in flashback to a random stranger throughout the course of the film – far better to have adopted a linear structure and just begun at the beginning instead of this wannabe clever-clever stuff). There are other pluses: the cast is faultless, and Soderbergh even elicits a rather effective performance from walking muscle Channing Tatum. But some of the seasoned performers are underutilised: Douglas, Banderas and Paxton are given little to work with, and Ewan McGregor is miscast in a wishy-washy role.

Don't be put off by many of the poor reviews and generally low aggregated rating here. 'Haywire' is a solid action thriller, with good fight and action scenes, and good use of music, and solid direction. The pace moves along swifty and fits plenty in within the lean 93 minutes runtime. I'm not sure why so many people didn't like this enjoyable movie. To each either own, I suppose. But I think it's more than worth a watch.

This movie stands out from any movie I've ever seen for one reason: it is the only movie I've seen where I believed the people fighting were actually fighting. I can't remember ever seeing a film where I was actually wincing and tensing up from fear that somebody was going to get hurt.

This isn't a film that depends on CGI or fast cuts or clever angles or even stunt people for the most part. The star of the film is clearly a very physical and capable woman of action, and she made me believe she was actually hurting the people she was pretending to hurt.

For that reason alone, it will always stand out in my memory. Most action films these days are terribly boring because it's all so cartoonish and exaggerated and stylized, and therefore unbelievable and fake. But this film kept the action grounded in the physical capabilities of its very capable star, and that made it anything but boring. I guess it didn't do to well at the box office, which is too bad. If this had launched a franchise I'd have been a big fan.