Haywire (2012)
Hollywood has consistently struggled with how to handle tough women on screen. There may be plenty of women in film who exhibit strong mental capabilities, but it is rare for a film to depict a woman who does not abandon femininity in order to put on a tough exterior. Who would have guessed that retired Woman’s MMA fighter Gina Carano would be able to pull off a correct mix of action and believability within her character, all while preserving an elegant feminine identity in the Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic) directed Haywire?
Haywire follows Mallory Kane (Carano), a top contractor with a private firm employed by the US government for various covert operations. After completing a successful operation rescuing and delivering a hostage in Barcelona to U.S. federal agent Coblenz (Michael Douglass), Kane is then encouraged by the firm’s director Kenneth (Ewan McGregor) to take a new mission in Dublin. This time, Kane is assigned to pose as the wife of British agent Paul (Michael Fassbender) during a party in order to make contact with Studor, a French national, which Kenneth wants to establish a connection with. Kane accepts the offer reluctantly, after being promised a long, paid vacation in exchange for only two days worth of work.
When Kane observes some strange behavior by Paul that is connected with her previous hostage rescue case, Kane is immediately on guard against Paul and is led to believe that she has been set up by him. Further putting Kane on alert, she discovers that the firm knew about the set up and is forced to begin evading the firm as well as U.S. Officials.
The film then follows Kane as she simultaneously evades both her employers and the government while trying to discover why and by whom she was set up. The plot eventually leads full circle and reveals to the audience how a series of coincidence was a carefully laid out plan to seamlessly implicate Kane in a series of crimes.
With a wide assortment of poorly written, poorly acted action/intrigue films spewed out by the film industry on an annual basis, it is certainly refreshing to watch one that is well constructed and executed. The action scenes compliment rather than dominate the storyline, and the performance of Carano as well as the diverse supporting cast provide strong support for the film. If films like this are any indication, it is certainly not true that an action lover needs to check their brain outside a theater in order to enjoy their genre of choice. Haywire is rated R for violence and some language and is currently running in limited release in theaters.
