Haywire Movie Review

By Eddy

My God what have I just watched?  I have returned to my hotel room after watching the movie Haywire and I had to start writing the review.  I couldn’t bear to think about the movie any long than I had too.  Believe me, I will be taking a long shower after this…and I am not ruling out crying it out in the fetal position while I am there. Steven Soderbergh has taken the Ocean’s movie formula way too far. Just because it worked more or less with those comic caper movies doesn’t mean it will work all the time, it also helped to have the full star power and charm of Brad Pitt and George Clooney.   While not lacking in stars (Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxon, Channing Tatum, Micheal Fassbender and Michael Douglas  all of whom mailed in their performances)the movie in its purest essence is a revenge film ala Death Wish and therefore needs a bit more that a couple of stars mugging for the camera it needs to have an actual story.  It honestly felt that the cast basically ad libbed most of the film and what we were seeing was the rehearsal footage.  Apparently Mr. Soderbergh didn’t really understand that apparently movie making consists of throw a familiar face on the screen and some jazzy Ocean’s style music (and only that music) and some ridiculously bad dialog and you pretty much have the movie Haywire.

In addition, I feel like there has been a bit of bait and switch.  The title suggest that things go Haywire meaning crazy and frenetic instead this was the slowest paced turgid “action” film I ever had the displeasure to sit through.  I kept on telling myself maybe there is another level, maybe it is so slow because there is some subtext behind the two words said in the scene…I continued to say these things right until the credits started rolling and then I realized I was duped.  If you were looking for witty writing or some kind of connection between the characters be ready to be disappointed.  The best I could say about this movie is that maybe Steven Soderbergh was trying to play a joke on us, maybe he was going for a movie that barely could be graded a B-movie in the 70’s but with all the thing that make a B-movie fun taken out of it (blood, Boobs and backflips).  It is hard for me to criticize the movie’s lead actress, Gina Carano, since she is a fighter first rather than a full fledged actress but she was totally out of her depth in this movie.  This was no Girlfriend Experience for her, I am pretty sure she won’t be breaking out as a star anytime soon, at least Girlfriend Experience was supposed to be slow, again I cannot stress this enough this was supposed to be an action film.

I don’t want to waste any more time than I have to on Haywire but one of the most noticeable thing is propably stands as a hallmark of a Soderbergh film and that is the music or lack thereof.  As I said before, the only music seems to be B-side track from all three Ocean’s films other than that there are long bouts of absolutely nothing, just dialog and ambient noise, most fights in the movie occur in utter silence, I honestly felt as if I was watching an unfinished cut of the film.  It sapped all the drama and emotion from the film, and only served to focus my attention to the horrible dialog and poorly executed fights and camera angles.  For me it was the ultimate example of sloppy movie making.  I do not recommend this movie!

About Eddy Rodriguez

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