3.5 stars. Rating: R, and needlessly, for action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.20.12
Movies are all about make-believe: our willing suspension of skepticism in exchange for a good time. We tolerate the impossible — varying degrees of the impossible, depending on the genre — because it’s part of the fantasy.
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| Although her team's human target has been rescued and safely stowed away, Mallory (Gina Carano) is a consummate professional who hates loose ends. She therefore pursues the one antagonist who dashes off, even though his escape can't compromise her efforts. Cue an energetic foot chase with lots of running. |
Unfortunately, like a drug addiction that requires an ever-increasing dosage, filmmakers are forever seeking new ways to up the ante and further impress us: to once again deliver a fresh jolt of eyebrow-raising amazement.
Consider the action hero. Back in 1963, the climactic fist-fight between James Bond and Red Grant, in the close confines of a train compartment in From Russia with Love, set a new standard for brutal, claustrophobic mano a mano combat. For the next several decades, film fans and movie stuntmen alike cited that scene as one of the finest ever caught on camera. Indeed, director Terence Young’s work was potent enough to bother British film censors.
Flash-forward to 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum, when director Paul Greengrass and editor Christopher Rouse staged an even more jaw-dropping skirmish in London’s Waterloo Station: a melee involving Jason Bourne and several antagonists that was so ferociously intense, viewers actually applauded as the scene concluded. It, too, felt real.
That’s the key: credibility.
Trouble is, many directors push the envelope too far, particularly in the action thriller genre. Escalate the violence too much — turn the obligatory fight scenes into cartoons, with heroes and villains somehow enduring bone-crushing punishment — and we simply scoff and roll our eyes over the sheer stupidity of the whole thing. (Exhibit A, with a bullet: last year’s laughably idiotic Sucker Punch.)
Director Steven Soderbergh understands this: recognizes how “inflated thrills” have ruined many otherwise decent pictures. Haywire is his captivating, energized response: a spy drama with action scenes — very much in the mold of From Russia with Love, which he cites in his film’s press notes — rather than a wall-to-wall action flick with minimal story and progressively sillier fight scenes.
Soderbergh wants us to believe that the action elements in this film are punishing but reasonable: not so acrobatic or dangerous that a human being couldn’t possibly handle them.
His secret weapon: mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano, whose fighting styles include Muay Thai, karate, jiu jitsu, judo, wrestling, boxing, sambo, kick-boxing and kung fu ... all in a taut and unexpectedly hot bod. At first glance, during deceptively calm moments, she’s precisely the sort of individual who’d be underestimated right up to the moment she’d flip across the room, slam you to the floor and crush the air out of you — permanently — with a vicious, leg-twisting headlock.
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films), a seasoned warrior who disguises his prowess beneath the bedraggled appearance of a seemingly wine-besotted beggar.