Sometimes I wonder if it's the world that changed or if I'm just getting more cynical, but it seems that everywhere I go people get more and more aggressive about selling me everything I can come in contact with. Gina Carano was an inspiring idea five years ago, back when she headlined pay-per-views guys around the world paid for and cared about for reasons other than her tits. First thing our society did was to package-wrap her, put her on American Gladiators and of course, featured her in an inane movie called Haywire that Steven freakin' Soderbergh of all people directed.
Gina was then consumed by America and promptly forgotten. If there was more to her than a beautiful face and good fighting technique, it has eluded me.
Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) is a former U.S Marine doing covert ops for government contractor. Her handler and apparently ex-boyfriend Kenneth (Ewan McGregor) sends her on an easy extraction mission in Europe that goes as planned until her contact Paul (the inexorable Michael Fassbender) inexplicably tries to murder her. Turns out Mallory has been set up by her employer to take the fall in a geopolitical chess game and it's such a blow to her integrity, she has to kill everybody involved. Then she proceeds to do so, unraveling a intricate conspiracy about something that doesn't have much to do with the film you're shown.
There are two kinds of bad movie: stupid movies and movies that think you're stupid. Haywire is the latter kind of bad. Tell me with a straight face that it would've been produced without having to parade Gina Carano like a circus freak: "Ladies and gentlemen, come one, come all. Gather 'round to watch the lady with the legit moves in action." It's not even the worst part. All the acting talent in the world cannot save that movie from its inane screenplay. Michael Fassbender and believe it or not Channing Tatum come the closest to creating a vivid scene, but hey. When a movie is supposed to be about some chick putting men in triangle chokes, then it has to be about men being put in triangle chokes, right?
Who are we kidding here?
See, Haywire is not the progressive movie about a chick beating up conniving men that it pretends to be. It's just a series of masturbatory scenes for men who think their boner is more sophisticated than everybody else's. Everything in that movie is sexual, from the way Gina Carano walks to the way she "handles" bad guys. Nothing against female sexuality as a weapon, but it has to come with personality and context to be enjoyed and Haywire lacks both. I try to enjoy movies for what they are most of the time, but such dishonesty and cynicism just rubs me the wrong way. I have no fucking clue who Steven Soderbergh and legendary screenwriter Lem Dobbs thought it was a story meant to be told, but Haywire is a dog turd on the lawn of their legacy.
I remember the general reaction when Haywire's trailer first aired on Spike TV in 2011. Everybody loved Gina Carano back then, but it looked exactly like what it turned out to be: a hollow spy thriller meant to cash-in on the sex appeal of America's newest darling. All the talent in the world (which this film literally features) cannot save Haywire from itself. Let's face it Americana: we were sold the sophisticated sexual fantasy of Gina Carano being an international woman of mystery, we have fapped and moved on. It's on us. We are the people buying fast food after all. Sometimes it gets shoved down our throats whether we like it or not.