Soderbergh Marathon: Part 25

Intro

Haywire (2011)
We're reaching the endgame folks.  I have just one more movie after this one and I can officially say I have seen every Steven Soderbergh movie.  I can now say I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of him as a filmmaker.  He has three modes to simplify it more than I should: he has his mainstream movies, his experimenting with technology movies, and his genre movies.

Haywire tackles a genre Soderbergh has not yet tackled, and unless the next and last movie I cover is a vastly different movie than I expect, it remains his only movie.  This is Soderbergh's action movie.  I've also seen it called a martial arts movie, which may or may not be true, but if you told me that beforehand, I'd feel like I was misled.

Haywire combines the Lem Dobbs-Soderbergh collaboration for the third time.  Weirdly, the movies are separated by 20 years and if the trend holds, we can expect a fourth collaboration around 2021.  Dobbs has solo writing credit on all three films, and all three oddly enough are pretty damn reliant on the director.  Kafka is completely stylized, The Limey's appeal is basically its editing, and of course Haywire is an action movie, so the action is the appeal, not the dialogue or even the story.

The main function of an action movie is to entertain with action scenes and not let the rest of the movie fuck that up.  Most action movies fail to even deliver on that first part, much less come up with a competent story.   Haywire does however deliver on the action elements.

Soderbergh would make a good action director if he decided to go in that direction.  He films most of the action scenes at a farther distance than most action directors do, so that you can see every punch and kick land.  There's no shaky cam, no 10 cuts for every 5 seconds here.  And he was able to do this because the film's star, Gina Carano, was an MMA star.

About Carano, she will not blow you away as an actress.  But she does what's needed.  She was well-cast, because the character she plays doesn't really require much range, but she does require someone who can convincingly kick ass.  And she convincingly kicks ass!  This is one of those movies where every punch, kick, you can hear and feel.  They seem brutal.  Like I said, Soderbergh could do this any time he wants to if he wanted to, which I doubt.

As far as the second part of a good action movie, the rest of the movie does not fuck up.  It holds together.  It would certainly not stand under scrutiny, but I had no problems following the movie's plot as the movie happened.  And it's hard to tell if the dialogue is specifically good, because well every other part in this movie is like an A-list actor.

Yeah the supporting cast in this movie is insane.  Like ridiculously overqualified.  You have Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Fassbender playing what amount to bit parts.  Well McGregor's is a bit more prominent, but he lurks in the shadows most of the movie, so even he doesn't get a lot of screentime.  You also have a young Michael Angarano and Bill Paxton to round out the cast, and while both of them I would picture in a movie like this even without Soderbergh's involvement, they just add to the acting talent.

All in all, Haywire gives you what you came for and that's really the most important element of an action movie.  You hire Carano to do what she does best - beat people up - and make it look like she's actually beating people up, and you have a successful movie.

3/4 stars