Haywire

 

DIRECTED BY-: 
Steven Soderbergh

STARRING-: 

Gina Carano 

Ewan McGregor 

Michael Fassbender

 

YEAR OF RELEASE-: 

2011

PREMISE-: 

A black ops soldier seeks payback after she is betrayed and set up during a mission.

 

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

THE POSITIVES-: 

• Gina Carano sells the fight scenes extremely well.

• The action is well shot and choreographed.

THE PROBLEMS-:

• The film lacks that signature Steven Soderbergh-ian style, charm and wit that I was looking forward to. 

• Channing Tatum was criminally underutilized. He could have been the perfect foil to Gina's character but instead his presence felt inconsequential.

• The story is something we've already seen numerous times on screen and the script doesn't bother to present a refreshing or interesting take on it. In fact, despite being derivative of several other works, it still manages to have logical flaws and plot holes. 

• Marollyn as a character is very bland and one-note. We learn that she is leaving the ‘’Company'' but we're left in the dark about her reason for doing so. This was a missed opportunity of giving her more character traits. Maybe she has a chip on her shoulder and is fed up of killing people and craves normalcy? We are never told. This inhibits the audience from forming a personal connection with her character or caring about her when she's fighting the bad guys. The fact that she single-handedly takes down an entire assassin organization (while being injured by the way) and not losing anyone close to her (they kill off Channing Tatum but the film does very little at making us care about his character so his death doesn’t invoke the desired emotional reaction) in the  process doesn't help either. Her father's death would have been more meaningful and would have humanized her and made her character vulnerable while at the same time raising the stakes and adding much-needed tension to scenes. But, the assassin's group do not take her father hostage to lure her in and instead they let some goons loose and expect everything to be okay.  

• The editing in some places is obnoxious and jarring. Some scenes needed to be paced better while some scenes should have been cut out entirely.

FINAL RATING-: 4/10