TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Reviews Film / Haywire

Go To

•••
Aprilla Since: Aug, 2010
04/04/2013 23:31:51
•••

Good But Underdeveloped

Steven Soderbergh is clearly a competent director, and he has a decent idea of how to put together an action movie. Haywire has some of the strongest action sequences I've seen in a while, and it avoids the shaky camera effects that have plagued many action movies such as the Bourne series. As the trope page notes, the action is crisp, necessarily brutal rather than gratuitously so, and Carano moves efficiently and swiftly. Carano is not the greatest actor to enter Hollywood, but I respect her effort because I view her as an MMA fighter first and foremost. This movie feels like a setup for a series of taut combat maneuvers that refreshingly avoid pretentious, excessively loud drama and pyrotechnics.

Unfortunately, Haywire feels underdeveloped. The story was poorly conceived and difficult to grasp. The dialogue is actually too cryptic and terse for its own good, but I understand that Soderbergh was aiming for spy-like exchanges that create an air of tension of mystery. I'm noticing a trend in action movies in which the demand for realism and not insulting the viewers' intelligence had led to directors to swing in the opposite direction. I feel that the "show don't tell" rule is being taken to extremes far too often, and Haywire is an example of what happens when the character development and plot development suffer from vague expository details.

On the plus side, I can't praise the action sequences enough. Carano and the other active cast members demonstrate proper room clearing and marksmanship, and Carano performs superbly in her use of plausible hand-to-hand combat techniques. When discussing ideas for writing structurally sound female action characters, I often point to Carano's portrayal of Mallory Kane as how it should be done. She has weight and muscle to her physique. She is very attractive and obviously a seasoned athlete. When she kicks, grapples and punches her foes, you can sense the gravity, effort and ferocity of each successful - and unsuccessful - blow. This is heavyweight, bone-crunching combat, not a dance recital. The gun fights, while difficult to discern, have a sense of immediacy that is closer to what an actual gun fight looks like. In short, Haywire has characters that look like they are sincerely trying to kill each other. Unfortunately, the storyline drags it down and hampers the pacing.

•••
Lightflame Since: Jan, 2010
04/02/2013 15:08:12
•••

I agree that the storyline is awful. My friends and I frequently bring it up as a subject for mocking.

However, I have to say that the action sequences have their fair share of crap too. That guy at the end lost because he didn't know how to not trip over a rock, and one of the chase scenes involves two characters just walking on the sidewalk.

This review is nice, but I would note that I would definitely not recommend this movie.

"Oh great! Let's pile up all the useless cats and hope a tree falls on them!"
•••
Aprilla Since: Aug, 2010
04/04/2013 23:31:51
•••

I never said the storyline was awful. Like I said, it was underdeveloped and poorly conceived, but I wouldn't say it was awful.

The beach fight didn't really seem that bad, and his tripping over the rock seemed perfectly plausible given the heightened tension and the fact that he had been slammed in the head several times.

As for the sidewalk scene, that also made sense to me. They weren't just pleasantly taking a stroll so much as the enemy tracker was trying to subtly close the distance on her while she was attempting to carefully keep him at bay. Some of the police officers I've worked with have explained this in detail. When attempting to retreat from a pursuing party, you want to try to gradually distance yourself from them while making sure there are multiple people positioning themselves to ambush you. Cops often catch a suspect by cutting him off at multiple points, and this is easy to do because most suspects wildly bolt like crazy the moment they realize they're being followed.

The movie is far from perfect, but the action sequences weren't what I'd call nonsense.


Leave a Comment:

Top