In all seriousness it is my contention that Steven Soderbergh's current film HAYWIRE is better than any of the 2011 Academy Award Best Picture nominees. It is pure genre excess. KILL BILL with spies! This is what HANNA could have been if it wasn't so goddamn boring!
In short what do you get when you take MMA legends Gina Carano, put her in a little black number, and let her destroy furniture in expensive looking hotel rooms while doing AWEOSME KARATE to beat up generically evil men? Fun. This shit is a ton of fun. Granted I am somewhat of a sucker for AWESOME KARATE, but I don’t think I am alone here. HAYWIRE is decidedly a movie for fans of KILL BILL 1 who thought KILL BILL 2 was garbage pastiche; I don’t need the goddamn cinephilic pandering, just give me fight scenes! KILL BILL part 1 is one of my all time favorites, just pure visceral action, with only the most basic gestures towards plot. A seminal work in a subgenre I call ‘creative violence.’
HAYWIRE is of this ilk. Carano jumps between walls, flips, uses props, mercilessly kicks more than one testicle. Soderbergh realizes the best technique at his employ is to put us in there with Carano, let us see what she sees. There is a awkwardly long chase sequence through Barcelona, but instead of getting the god’s eye view (a la Bourne) of where the good guys and bad guys are, the chessboard view, we are right there in it with Carano. Will she/will we catch the bad guy? Can she/we run that fast? Make that leap across rooftops? Can she/can we anticipate who will double-cross, who will deceive, who will break the tenuous quiet and throw that first punch?
Look I’m not saying movies should be all explosions and no emotional substance. The gestures towards plot and character here are purposeful softball tosses. It’s Soderbergh having a good time—which is the greatest tool in his arsenal (and the single engine that propelled a less-face-it pretty damn slight movie like OCEAN’S 11 through two sequels—this shit looks like a ton of fun.) This is the antidote to a movie like TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, which is so wrapped up in its clever intricacy that it forgets to be entertaining. This is also a great example of the kind of movie I like, which is any kind that is exactly and 100% what it purports to be. I liked MELANCHOLIA because it was so persistently unlikeable, Lars von Trier’s bizarre modus operandi. I like HAYWIRE because it so effortlessly runs on adrenaline, and doesn’t pretend otherwise. Opposite movies but equally yielding to their disparate set of rules.
The cast is…well, let’s just say “acting” has not much of a place here. I mean he cast an experienceless MMA fighter as his lead, and then had her re-dub all her lines in the studio (you can’t really notice, most of the time). She is tough and aloof, which honestly makes sense for her character, though I wouldn’t say she has a long and storied acting career ahead of her. Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas are comparative clowns, on such a different comfort level acting that their performances seem somehow over the top (they aren’t, really). Then there’s Channing Tatum (or is is Tatum Channing—I never remember, for real. Either way it’s stupid).
Channing Tatum is very very very very very very very very good-looking. Crazy good looking. Channing Tatum can't act his way out of a paper bag. I mean literally, if some evil multimillionaire genius commissioned greedy scientists to create some sort of hyperbolic, human-sized containment vessel-cum-paper bag (bear with me), and hired some drugged up thug to kidnap Mr. Tatum using a formaldehyde-soaked cloth on his way out of the Starbucks on Melrose and Vine, and then in some weird Saw-inspired contrivance threatened to slowly and brutally dismember the actor, UNLESS he performed Sir Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet or at the very least Robin Williams Mrs. Doubtfire--that scene in the beginning where he does all those nutty voices--Mr. Channing could not act his way out of that fucking bag. He is almost the paradigmatic example of a meathead-he doesn't have eyes, rather just lumps of muscle and a cute smile. Catch him in about five upcoming movies this Spring.
But Hollywood loves that shit, and he’s almost the definition of ‘fine’ in his limited role. Michael Fassbender also makes a stylish cameo, another actor who is popping up everywhere after his intense leading performance in SHAME. Fassbender is similarly piercing here (although in HAYWIRE the part of Fassbender’s dick is played by Channing Tatum), but it’s a joke. It’s no spoiler to say he is but a straw man for Carano’s weapons-grade thunder thighs. It’s a great fight.
All in all, it’s not changing any rules or crowning any stars, but HAYWIRE is another great Soderbergh piss in the snow. It doesn’t belittle anyone nor hang the ornaments of meaningless explosions on a Christmas tree of weaponry—it just does its thing and ends. God bless the finite.
