Haywire

2012 • 92 minutes

About this movie

Directed by Oscar® winner* Steven Soderbergh (Contagion), this dynamic action-thriller introduces mixed martial arts (MMA) superstar Gina Carano as Mallory Kane, a black-ops agent for a government security contractor. After freeing a Chinese journalist held hostage, Mallory is double-crossed and left for dead -- by someone in her own agency. Suddenly the target of assassins who know her every move, Mallory unleashes the fury of her fighting skills to uncover the truth and turn the tables on her ruthless adversary. Featuring Carano performing her own high-adrenaline stunts and an all-star cast including Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas, HAYWIRE is explosive movie entertainment.

Ratings and reviews

One of the WORST and most boring movies I have ever seen. The script is painful, and reeks of a writer who doesn't know how anything in the world actually works, so he contrives situations and boring fights which seem forced when anything is happening. But most of the time, nothing is happening. Worst of all, the camera is either locked off or on amateurish tripods to frame scenes which do not further the plot or provide anything interesting to look at. Most of the scenes seem to exist only to waste time for lack of a script. Then when the camera is actually moving, it is more intelligent than the script and leads the action as if it already knows the actors marks and where they are going to walk. This is one of the best examples, of a director who does not know how to film or write, and this entire movie could have been compressed down to a five minute short, if you remove all the necessary pauses and scenes where nothing is happening. And it would still have been a boring five minute short. I feel sorry for all the actors involved in this. It is clearly the mistake of the director. And shockingly bad for a highly acclaimed director who should know better.

I thought, "an action movie with a strong female lead, we don't get to see many of those". Unfortunately this one is abysmal, one of the worse movies I have ever seen. "worse than Valerian" said one friend, "longest 90min ever" said another. The writing was awful. The cinematography was the worst, horrible lighting, long awkward shots, poor angle choices. It was trying way too much for some art house vibe. We felt like we were the ones being kidnapped and forced to watch. I will try to never watch another Steve Soderbergh movie for the rest of my life.

It's easy to mistake what's going on in this film or to miss the overall point director Steven Soderbergh was going for with this film. It is in many ways a deconstruction of the action movie model - an exercise in film making where the female protagonist is not coddled by the filmmaker, and the camera respects her competence by not chopping up the action scenes with multiple cuts. It even refuses the typical action palette, eschewing the typical desaturated blues and grays in favor of yellows (I'm not convinced this is overly successful, but it is interesting). Oscar-worthy performances you won't find here, but it is a decent, entertaining - if somewhat forgettable - film.