Sunday 6 May 2012

Today's Review: Haywire


There seem to be a lot of movies coming out with one word titles. I guess they've run out of ways to make their titles both relevant and catchy, so they open the dictionary and find something that sounds vaguely thrilling. So here we have Haywire, a secret agent movie about things going a little bit haywire.

Gina Carano stars as Mallory Kane (what an awesome yet awful name), an agent working for a privately contracted company who has been hired for a job that went a little bit wrong. Now finding herself on the run from her employers and colleagues, she has to get to the bottom of this betrayal before it's too late.

Well, I'll just say that Haywire isn't overly thrilling. Sure, there are some decent action scenes, with Carano herself pulling off some quite impressive stunts. Trouble is the plot isn't too involved, and the dialogue is quite lacking, especially due to the fact that they have people like Michael Douglas and Ewan McGregor to work with. The performances are okay, but the whole movie just feels a little underdone. While you might expect a thumping soundtrack to go with the action scenes, the music is sparse and not very involved. Some parts of the flashback to the doomed mission are cut out altogether, giving it a bit of a disjointed feel. I guess in a way it just doesn't feel finished.

Still, Haywire is not an awful movie. There are some adequate performances and some great stunt and action work in play. It's just lacking the polish that has been seen in Steven Soderbergh's other works, like the Ocean's series or last year's Contagion. It could really have been something with some more work.

My rating: 3/5

No comments:

Post a Comment