Reviews Film / Haywire

Just...not good at all.

It's a strange feeling you get leaving a movie theater. Sometimes you're elated, sometimes you think it was a decent enough way to sink 2 hours, sometimes you just say "meh." After Haywire, I left the theater feeling guilty that I'd given the makers of this movie 10 bucks.

The story is a decently enough set up, but the plot manages somehow to simultaneously be horribly convoluted and incredibly trite at the same time. Given the fact that it's supposed to be "gritty and realistic," its sheer contrived-ness is also rather mind-boggling. No self-respecting spy agency would put up this convoluted of a plot to try and get rid of somebody. The dialogue is horribly unnatural and feels canned and stilted, like a salted circus clown.

The biggest problem, though, was the acting and choreography. Gina Carano makes an admirable effort, but still manages to come up short, and as for the more experienced members of the cast, it's painfully obvious that they just don't give a shit. This acting is so wooden you'd be forgiven for mistaking some of the actors for trees. And as for the choreography...don't get me started. For a film that props up its "grittiness" and "realism," Mallory sure seems to spend a lot of time jumping off walls and doing acrobatic martial arts that would make a shonen protagonist jealous, as well as taking out whole squads of SWAT soldiers. In heels, no less. But that can be forgiven. No, the worst part of the choreography was the one-on-one fight scenes. They look like rehearsals by the worst actors for the world's worst school play. More than once, Mallory's opponents literally just stand there and wait to be punched in the face. There's no flow to the fighting, no real confrontation...it just looks like a skeleton practice for the first day on set. It couldn't have been more obvious if Ewan Mac Gregor had said out loud, "Now you punch me in the jaw!"

Antonio Banderas does look good in a beard, though.