Friday, August 03, 2012

Movie review - "Haywire" (2011) **1/2

This would have been more fun if it was trashier - good on Steven Soderbergh for trying to make a commercial action thriller with a female lead, and attempting to launch a new star in Gina Carano, but the plot will be familiar to anyone who watched a lot of action movies in the 80s. Carano is a kind-of government agent who is set up by - gasp - her own organisation and who try to kill her.

They try to jazz it up a little with some non-linear structuring but that doesn't help. Nor does shying away from fully embracing the cliches to give cheesy emotion - at least that would be something. It all feels a bit flat.

Carano is cute and a terrific fighter, though clearly inexperienced as an actor. There's a divine cast, but Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor are called upon to do fight scenes and don't do them that well - Channing Tatum is very believable though. Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas look old, and Michael Angarano seems as though he's going to have a big part but then kind of disappears.

Some of the fight scenes are very well done but a lot of the excitement feels drained out of this movie. Carano would have been better off making her star debut in some straight to DVD action trash.

No comments: