HAYWIRE

Haywire, one of 2 films outrageously, prolific director Steven Soderbergh released in 2012, is something of a minimalist thriller. Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs (Dark City) know that their plot, about a burned spy trying to clear her name, is completely out of the manual and use it as window dressing, getting it out of the way as a efficiently and unobtrusively as possible to make way for the main event.

The main event is Gina Carano who plays Malory Kane, the burned spy. There really isn't much to her other than "spy."  The film doesn't make her into much of a person and instead features lengthy scenes of her running, jumping and beating the ever loving shit out of her enemies.

The choice to dehumanize Kane must have been at least partly practical. Carano was not hired for her minimal acting experience, but her incredible MMA fighting skills. Which explains the incredible all-star cast Soderbergh has including to support her including: Ewan McGreggor as her boss, Channig Tatum as a co-worker, Micheal Fassbender as a mystery contact, Micheal Douglas as a government official and Bill Paxton as her dad. But the dehumanization also says something interesting about female action heroes in general. There are plenty of exceptions but it seems that Hollywoods general idea of what to do with women in action movies is to write them as boys, but with more revealing costumes and less interesting personalities.

In Haywire, Kane's lack of personality is strangely the thing that makes her interesting. She reminded me of Val Kilmer in Spartan, who was also defined almost solely by his commitment to work. Late in the film, one character says that it would be a mistake to think of Kane as a woman. Indeed, it might be a little much to think of her as human. Her idea of relaxing is that she allows herself a glass of wine while she cleans her gun. If she ever had any humanity, she scarified it long ago in order to join the boys club of private sector espionage. Maybe all spies are like this to a degree, it would seem to come with the territory.

I like that the film doesn't cheat. It's as utterly dedicated to its vision of this dehumanized lifestyle as Kane is, and doesn't do anything to artificially soften her or sexualize her in any way. In fact, when the plot calls on for her to wear a dress, Kane looks unfathomably uncomfortable in it, as if it were some sort of alien concept to her. All she cares about is the fighting.

The fighting she does extremely well. Carano's skills are amazing to behold. I foresee that Carano may very well become a great action star, she certainly couldn't have a better showcase. She has a number of brutal, bone crunching fights. Each one is expertly and inventively choreographed, all achieving that tough balance of looking realistic wile remaining aesthetically beautiful. Soderbergh's laid back style lends itself well to capturing action. He doesn't try and sensationalize it with wild camera movements or overly choppy editing. Instead he respects the work that Carano and many of her co-stars put into performing all those great feats of athleticism.

Haywire is a fun, engaging 93 minutes, it delivers on the promise of seeing its star hit people very hard wile also serving up an interesting nugget about the masculation of women in action movies turning into complete dehumanization. But the idea feels vastly underexplored here. It's a rough sketch of a film begging to be filled in.

Grade: B+

Note: Haywire is currently streaming on Netflix Instant