Haywire

In truth, Haywire is simply a delivery system for ass-kickings, calibrated to the specific talents of Gina Carano, a former mixed-martial-arts star and American Gladiator whose fists (and feet) of fury can rattle skulls and cave in chests.

There's no deeper meaning to Steven Soderbergh's thriller than what meets the eye, yet its lustrous surfaces offer great and guilt-free pleasure.

Beautiful in a girl-from-the-neighborhood sort of way, Carano inhabits Soderbergh's elaborate frame with wit, physicality and just a hint of ironic distance, the suggestion of someone who's not overawed by the opportunity or taking herself too seriously.

Soderbergh tends to get one big idea - a thesis idea - per film and stick with it even when a touch more flexibility would help. Here it's that non-kinetic camera, which he's so wedded to that parts of the film seem underenergized, like a cheap seventies or early eighties picture you'd catch at two in the morning on Cinemax's tenth most popular channel.

Haywire cavorts around the world - Barcelona, Dublin, upstate New York, New Mexico - with Bourne-again energy and timeline shuffles, making only cursory attempts at plot coherence

Once the talking stops and the action begins, her professionalism is very much in evidence and exciting to watch. And yet, somehow, it cannot quite relieve the tedium of a movie that is too cool even to pretend that there is anything worth fighting about.

Haywire makes no sense whatsoever, which should come as no surprise. It's the latest brainless exercise in self-indulgence from Steven Soderbergh, whose films rarely make any sense anyway.

Basically everyone who gave this movie a bad review is brainwashed by Hollywood. Probably people who liked Mall Cop or something, and people who don't like seeing women kicking ass. If you want to leave the theatre satisfied and thinking "Wow I just saw a really good movie", go see it. It's a totally unconventional action movie, simply great. It feels 'realistic' in a human condition.

With a former MMA star in the lead role, the action scenes aren't bad at all, problems begin when Carano is asked to act rather than fight.

An enjoyable, if formulaic spy romp with some great fight scenes and a strong female lead. The shaky cam style works in the film's favor. Just don't expect too much from the plot.

I was very interested to see this movie. A film with a real heroine, a woman that can take care of herself, beat up the bad guys/gals and not just exist as a model actress (though Gina is very beautiful) while all the stunt women do the real work. However, what I got with this movie was horrible acting with wooden performances, cheesy lounge music over everything, and exceptionally dull dialog. The main draw of a women mma fighter, "the third best 145 lb (66 kg) fighter in the world", was that we'd get a real actress that handles all the dialog, the acting and some great fighting, as she actually knows how to fight properly (muay thai no less). However the fight scenes were over-directed, over-edited, and too short. Very few moments even felt like they were Gina, as the heavy editing could've allowed for a stunt double anyway. Gina seems to lack the charisma to hold a lead role as pretty much any of the supporting super-cast gave more energy and life to the film than she was able to. To see how a movie can look with a real fighter/actor look no further than JCVD. The film with John Claude Van Damme playing a version of himself with realistic action scenes and tense drama. The opening 5 minutes of that film alone better demonstrates what can be done with an actor than knows how to fight than any moment in this film can possibly wish to achieve.

This film is only 90 mins so the 30 mins I watched were a whole 3rd of it and in that time nothing happened to draw me in. There is no real introduction, it just throws you into the story with more random cut-aways than family guy and no idea what the hell is going on. There's annoying cheesy 80s style background music most of the time and the fights are more 'wrestley' than actually punching or shooting each other, not that there seems to be many fights, just a lot of talking.