“Haywire” Not a Kick off The Old Block

How do you feel about punching a girl in the face as hard as you can?

If that makes one feel queasy, then Haywire is a film that is best avoided. But for others, it’s a breath of fresh air in the overly masculine, hyper sexualized world of action films.

From a feminist perspective, the Steven Soderbergh-directed film kicks serious butt. From an action-junkie perspective, this film kicks serious butt. In general, Haywire kicks serious butt.

Haywire isn’t sexy. It isn’t glamorous despite its fresh-faced star. The action is devastatingly swift and – perhaps most disconcerting – incredibly realistic.

In fact, it may be the most realistic female-driven action flick, ever.

Featuring all the usual action memes – large explosions, clouds of bullets, brutal hand-to-hand fighting, and a body count well into the hundreds – Haywire could easily be seen as just another title in an almost endless list of incredibly violent, espionage-centered thrillers.

But what sets this thriller apart is that the film’s star, Gina Carano, isn’t just another pretty face: she’s a real-life Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) star.

Carano’s MMA background (at one point she was ranked the third-best 65-kilogram fighter in the world) makes her a genuine kicker of butt who punches out most of the cast and subdues the rest with her signature move, a headlock applied with two muscular legs that’s designed to choke the life out of anything within distance. Although her lines at times feel clunky (forgivable given it’s her first starring role), they are overshadowed by Carano’s jaw-dropping, violent choreography.

Indeed, Carano’s performance is one of the most visceral in recent memory, a physical tour de force that will leave viewers both enthralled and mortified by the sheer brutality of it all.

The downside though is that Carano’s performance is so spectacular, it overshadows the otherwise all-star supporting cast: action legends Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender, and even Bill Paxton are all cast aside like actresses in a Bond film (though it’s a refreshing role reversal). Although their performances are solid (particularly McGregor as Carano’s boss Kenneth), they often go unnoticed as they are one by one beaten into bloody submission.

Another issue is the film’s plot. Carano plays Mallory Kane, a mercenary who works for one of those shadowy private companies that the U.S. government uses for military operations so complex, they eventually become Soderbergh movies. Mallory is technically an action heroine, but as McGregor says, “You shouldn’t think of her as a woman. No, that would be a mistake.”

Haywire travels the world, starting in an upstate New York diner, where Mallory is accosted by Aaron (Tatum), a former colleague from a job gone wrong. Their reunion devolves into a pugnacious fistfight; for all his big-budget training in the Ocean trilogy, Soderbergh maintains a somewhat indie spirit, parking his camera and letting us watch the fists fly without the excessive editing that so often comprises (and confuses) modern action scenes.

Mallory escapes, taking an innocent bystander (Michael Angarano) with her. She begins telling him the story of her career and the movie unfolds in a crisscrossing flashback that goes from Barcelona to Dublin to Washington to New Mexico to old Mexico to Majorca, stopping in each spot just long enough so Mallory can whale the bejesus out of this villain or that.

While this kind of thing is de rigueur for the guys, it’s less common to see a leading lady in such a punishing role. And, unlike other action films with a take-no-prisoners heroine (especially those starring Angelina Jolie), Carano isn’t treated with kid gloves: the bad guys don’t just shoot at her, but attempt to beat her to a bloody pulp with the same treatment Bruce Willis or Vin Diesel would receive. She takes punishment almost as much as she dishes it out.

Essentially, Carano is an even less sociable Lisbeth Salander after prolonged steroid abuse. If Haywire has a problem – beyond the fact that viewers may never really know exactly what’s going on – it’s that the film has an endless appetite for scenes of Carano beating people up. She’s good at it, but after a while the picture starts to feel like a very long cage match.

Although the film’s relatively short running time (93 minutes) helps alleviate some of the numbness of watching one uncomfortably real-looking homicide after another, ultimately Carano is more Rambo than Bourne; blood will be spilled, and in copious amounts.

Yet Carano may also be just what the movies need: not another pretty face, but a woman with a devastating right hook.

Rating: 3 out of 4