REVIEW: Haywire

I've only ever walked out of the cinema once. That was when I went to see the film 'Spy Game' starring Brad Pitt. I would have been 15 and I wanted to see an all-action, mindless film. What I remember seeing (before I walked out) was a drama interwoven between short scenes of action.

When I went to see Haywire today, I felt like I was 15 again. I cannot really describe how disappointed I am with this film.

I'll admit, I didn't follow the production of this film at all and the first time I heard about it was when I saw the trailers in the cinema a couple of weeks ago. What I saw lead me to believe that it would be the typical spy film, with a subplot of revenge, mixed with a thumping soundtrack and cool fight scenes.

But, what Haywire actually is, is a slow-burning, gritty and "realistic" drama interwoven with a couple of fight scenes.

My main issue is the fact that this film had a slow plot. I don't have an aversion to films that like to slowly build up their plot at all. In fact, a couple of my favourite films include House of the Devil and Deathproof (films that couldn't be compared to Haywire in anyway, except that they have a slow story.)

However, the way that Haywire differs for me is that it's a slow plot with slow scenes as well... Let me try to explain; Deathproof was slow because it didn't have many car chase scenes (considering it was a road movie) but it featured lots of scenes with the female characters having witty dialogue full of banter. House of the Devil was slow because it was primarily one location for the majority of the film and had one character house sitting by themselves, but it had the nostalgia of the late 70s/early 80s to keep you entertained. Haywire was slow because it had lengthy scenes of the main character, Mallory (Gina Carano) walking silently down a street, interspersed between gritty fight scenes and minimal dialogue.

The film was just too silent for my liking. I have a busy life and I'm generally pretty tired a lot of the time (like I think most people are), so I need a film to grab me in some way and Haywire just didn't do that.

This brings me to my next two points about the film. Firstly, the main character played by Gina Carano was just not good enough. She was surrounded by supporting talent such as Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor and Antonio Bandaras, which just helped to prove that she just cannot act at all. Now, this partly seems to be not her fault - apparently they altered her voice in Post-Production to make her sound deeper, which made her sound really odd. However, I just did not believe for one second in the film that she was a trained assassin capable of killing people, even during the fight scenes.

The second point I wanted to make was that the music for this film was terrible. I've read online that some people are comparing the soundtrack to that of a TV film and I kind of agree (although I thought it sounded more like it belonged to the video game L.A. Noire in some places.) The fact that the fight scenes were silent actually added to the grittiness and realism of them in my opinion, but the scenes of drama and dialogue were in some desperate need of an effective soundtrack to help carry any emotion (because Carano was certainly struggling on her own.)

OK, so I may have sounded a bit harsh in my review, but I just felt like I was seriously cheated by the advertising for this film. I think I missed the credit in the trailer saying it was a Steven Soderbergh film (I liked Contagian) and I think I would of had different expectations if I knew it was him directing.

So, my advice to you if you choose to go and see Haywire is this... Make sure you go in expecting gritty fight scenes (but only a couple of them), a minimal soundtrack, some dodgy acting from the lead actress and a slow-burning plot (not something you would normally expect from an action spy film.)

** / *****