HAYWIRE Discussion - Page 3

 

Although Carano certainly brings an expertise to the movements that makes her incredible to watch in an action movie, I have to agree that complaining about the likes of Angelina Jolie is silly.  Pretty much all these characters are doing stuff no normal human could realistically do.  So is it any less believable coming from Angelina Jolie than Matt Damon?  I don't see why.

 

Me neither. Considering Carano's background and striking physical presence as compared to the typical female action star, this conversation has taken a turn for the silly.

It's very rare that any action movie fight is any kind of "believable" in terms of realism no matter the gender of the combatants. It's fair to say that Carano didn't overcome that, but seems unfair to say that makes her a less effective action actor because of it.

I'm biased as shit, so outside of Carano I couldn't give a shit about any of the other chunkheads engaging in MMA. So I don't care how fast they throw punches, or how much weight's put behind them. And since I'm under no illusion that I'm some expert combatant because of my background in boxing and martial arts, with a minimum of actual honest to god fights behind me, I don't care about how this stacks up in the real world either.

 

I think it's fun when girls get to be action stars, I don't care about anything else.

Being a huge MMA fan my main interest in this was seeing how Carano performed. That said, man I borderline hated this. The voiceover effect for Gina was jarring and distracting the entire time, the score seemed an ill-fit and it felt like it was assembled around someone with no acting experience. If anything this convinced me that Soderbergh is a better photographer than a director and that, as usual, his style leaves me feeling cold.

Except, if you had no idea how she talked (like 99% of the population), you didn't even notice it.  (It's actually noticeable and quite distracting in many other films, like Spaghetti Westerns, some of which are considered classics despite less than perfect technical elements.)  If it took you out of the movie, fine.  But it's hardly an objective problem with the film.

I've heard Gina talk but not enough to know it would be her talking if I didn't have a visual to go with it. It was the actual audio effect that bothered me. It was louder, clearer, had more bass and lazily handled when she'd turn her head, go into another room, etc.

I watched it on DVD... I don't know if there was something lacking in the sound quality, or in my ears that I didn't notice it.  This is the first I've heard anyone complain about it, though.  I understand you had other issues with the film; I just don't think that's one that should be held against it.

This movie is a failure when you factor in Sodenberg and the cast. It's DTV level moviemaking and it's a piece of shit.

Tried to watch it and had to take it out of the DVD player about 1/3 of the way in. I think Carino is a good actress, better than Siegal or Van Damme, that's for sure, and she's easy on the eyes. But the movie was so damn boring! Maybe it's the patented Not-edited-enough Soderberg process, but I just could not engage at all with this film.

Far be it for me to dictate to others what they should find exciting or not, but I can scarcely imagine someone finding this film to be unfinishable.

There are a few Chewers who agree with me. Soderbergh is very hit or miss with me. I think Traffic is a great film, I love Out of Sight and The Limey. Contagion is a great "Michael Creighton movie if Michael Creighton were still alive". Che I think is a colossal bloated bore with a good 2 hour film trapped inside of it.

 

FYI saying something like "Well I just can't imagine anyone have a different opinion on a film that me" isn't a good comeback. Just sayin.

 

That's not what he said though.  There's a difference between disliking a film and finding it so boring you can't even get through an hour and a half.

Fair enough. Thinking about the movie here's what I came up with as reasons I couldn't get through it:

 

1) The pacing. It was just off: I've seen Jim Jarmusch films that have more momentum. Which would be fine if there was something, anything going on in the head of this movie. As many Chewers note above, this film is cliche after cliche.

 

2) The characters: while I think the lead actress actually did a good job (and is beautiful and charming to boot), she did not "get me on her side" (not in the sense of liking her, but in the sense of rooting for her or at least being interested in what happened to her).

 

3) The cinematography. I'm amazed people in this thread think this is a "beautiful film". The beauty must happen after the point at which I removed the disk. What I saw was puke yellow, like someone had pissed on the film stock, and standard Indie "ice cold corporate building".

 

4) The film's timeline. It's all told in flashback so there is no chance the lead character won't survive, or even endure hardship. I know Soderburgh has used this convention (the peeling of the Plot Onion) in other films, but it fails here IMO.

 

5) The fights. Yeah they are well done and brutal, but in the two fights I saw, Carino gets viciously punched in the face numerous times, yet apart from a couple of small cuts she is unscathed. This punched me right out of the movie. I'd hate to see that lovely proboscis flattened, but no way she would not have been wrecked by that type/amount of punishment, and that, contrasted with the realism of the fight scene, just pushed me away.

Is this the first time in history you've seen a film where the hero / heroine takes an ungodly amount of punishment but doesn't end the picture in a persistent vegetative state or looking like the Elephant Man? The fights aren't "realistic", just extremely well-choreographed, not chopped up w/in an inch of their life, and devoid of wire-work or feats so heightened they border on superhuman.

 

Also, the film is only partially told in flashback while Kane is still on the run and vulnerable. Yeah, we know she obviously survives her encounter with Tatum and Fassy, but I don't believe that really lessens the intensity of those scenes. If anything, they're designed to make you wonder why all of this is happening to her and how she's going to navigate her way out of it. Shit, you didn't even finish it, so you're understanding of the piece is incomplete and basically subject to disregard.

Edited by JacknifeJohnny - 6/4/12 at 12:34pm

Except they are staged and shot in a very realistic manner, unlike a Van Damme movie where it's so "balletic" that you know and accept it's a "fantasy". It's the dissonance between how the fights are staged and the (lack of) effect in Haywire that put me off.

 

It's one thing if it happens in your typical summer action movie, but this film is shot in a very plain and realistic manner which means you can't quite get away with the same things you can in a Jet Li film.  It's an easier sell for me personally to accept a combatant that's so good that he never gets hit, than a combatant so invincible that he never gets seriously hurt.

Do people really need to be spoon-fed that much? The movie is about a sexy, super-secret merc bouncing from country to country and motherfuckers off of walls to break the back of a conspiracy against her. Its very premise is the sell. It's shot the way it's shot because that's how Soderbergh shoots films.

Boringly

Fabulous comeback. You win everything there is to win.

The world is divided into two kinds of people: people who like Soderbergh, and big jerks.

Seriously, Soderbergh is like a Systems Analyst who went into film. I'm a Nerd so I actually like that approach for stories like Contagion or Traffic, where the intent is to show essentially an eco-system at work. Even in films like The Limey there is a sense in which we are being shown a particular niche in the underworld and how it operates (all of these are fictitious "worlds", of course).

 

That approach requires that their be something of substance being examined. There is nothing in Haywire, not even a plot, since that is telegraphed in the first 10 minutes.

All just my own opinion of course.

 

 

No room for people who like some Soderbergh films, but not others? The Internet wins again! Please PM me your address so I can send you a copy of The Good German.

Maybe it was the lowered expectations which did it, or knowing since pretty much it came out to the big screen that the story was simplistic at best, but I happened to enjoy this quite a bit.

 

The fact that this is about a female who is a great ass-kicker is appealing; I swear, it's not for perv reasons. Also, the lady not being anorexic and playing that sort of role is rather nice too.

 

I enjoyed how it was shot; a major pet peeve is how (unfortunately) most action movies are shot these days; that shaky-cam/quick edit crap I usually do not enjoy and I much rather prefer how this was done. Being able to make out what is going on is always a plus with me. I am also fine with the long takes, the silence, and not there being all the flashy camera angles. I never got bored at all; the story moves rather quickly. I thought the jazzy score was awesome and I never thought it clashed with the film at all.

 

So, I think I dun goofed by not seeing this on the big screen. I wasn't sure about it when it came out but now, I think I should have gone to a theatre to see it that way. I mean, I wasn't expecting to see a deer jump into the story... literally. That got a big laugh out of me, along with Gina being rather ruthless in general.

 

You know, maybe I should enjoy Soderbergh and his works more than I do. I'll just ignore the crap (the Oceans films) and focus on other things that I am sure would be more to my eccentric tastes.

 

 

If you think this movie is boring, I'd be really curious to hear your opinion of Bubble. I'm guessing you shut it off sometime during the opening credits? 

I don't have a problem with people not liking Soderbergh, especially when he's in his 'fuck around' mode (this, Bubble, The Girlfriend Experience). Except if the same people also don't like Ocean's 12. Then I think they're poopy-heads.

 

I wasn't being remotely serious.

 

I can agree with this.

 

I like Soderbergh, I think he's unusually talented, but I also find his style to be unnecessarily clinical and distanced.  It's almost like he's afraid of narrative and has to endlessly dissect it in order to feel comfortable with it.  That's one of his weaknesses that also happens to be his main strength.  It's a weird dissonance.

Ha! Threaten to send someone a copy of The Good German and watch them fold!

In his own words he's an artist, not a storyteller. If he goes through with this retirement, that's a good part of the reason; he's done experimenting with the medium.

Wasn't being negative towards Soderberg in general, just underwhelmed by Haywire. Keep the Fanboyism down!

Finally saw this. Been waiting a long time (currently living in a country where I couldn't find it in theatres). It was worth the wait. The only thing I was afraid of was that the movie would include some MMA moves in what are supposed to be real life and death situations.

 

I like MMA, but I imagined seeing it used for self-defense in a real fight might look cornball. I'm not talking about the punching and kicking. I'm talking about stuff like a Kimura Lock. It could be like when The Rock is in a bar fight in a movie and he does 'The Rock Bottom'. It's a cute visual reference for wrestling fans, but also ridiculously silly.

 

Right at the beginning, in the diner scene, Carano was clearly doing MMA stuff the way she twists around Tatum to trap his arm. When I saw that, my heart sank. It looked so cheesy and I was worried that the whole movie would be like this.

 

Fortunately, this was the only instance where I felt the MMA-like fighting came across really unnatural and a bit goofy. I really enjoyed the fights throughout the rest of the film. They felt a lot more natural and realistic.

 

I liked how they all seemed so sloppy and spontaneous, yet at the same time, obviously choreographed meticulously. The beach fight in particular was somehow both beautiful and really, really funny due to the combination of it feeling awkward, yet dynamic at the same time. There's such an intriguingly weird combination of qualities in this movie's action scenes.

 

This movie just reinforced my appreciation for Soderberg as a filmmaker. I've enjoyed all the Soderberg movies I've seen to varying degrees. "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" and "The Girlfriend Experience" were sad, touching, and fascinating, but not movies I'd ever want to watch again.

 

"Out of Sight", "The Limey", and "Traffic" are all tremendously entertaining and moving at the same time. They are movies I love to watch again and again. I think I saw "Ocean's Eleven", but I don't remember.

 

"Haywire" reminded me of "The Limey" at times, and that's a big compliment. It didn't have as much substance and as many memorable lines as that movie, nor did it have the emotional impact. I didn't feel for the characters, but I was absorbed from start to finish anyway.

 

I think part of what made it so enthralling to me was how sparse it was. I really liked the pacing and even when there was exposition, it was fairly swift (one of my biggest pet peeves in general with movies these days is pace-killing exposition). The whole thing felt very '90s old school to me, and that thrills me, because I love a lot of movies from that period, especially action movies.

 

Again, this kind of lean storytelling, reminiscent of "The Limey", was what I'd hoped for, knowing that the two movies had the same screenwriter. I'm so glad he delivered again. My favourite similarity between the two movie was the framing in the last scene.

 

It echoes the brilliant shot in "The Limey" where someone is thrown over a cliff in the background (one of the most hilariously clever shots in movie history, as far as I'm concerned). As soon as the shot was set up so we're seeing something happening all blurry over the shoulder of loungin' sleazebag Banderas, I knew what was coming. Even knowing, I still enjoyed every second of it. Perfect ending.

Edited by Naisu Baddi - 6/28/12 at 1:44pm

Caught this last night - enjoyed it, for the most part. I often find myself blowing hot and cold with Soderbergh and his odd 'juxtaposing modern and retro elements all at once' ways, but usually the overall quality of the direction keeps me watching. Haywire was a similar case: found Holmes' score a bit distracting at times, but the cinematography was gorgeous and Carano did solid work in the lead. Now and again her mannerisms had that slightly forced 'I'm acting!' feel you often get from non-pros, but I found her performance hiked up a level when she had lots of physical stuff going on as well, which you'd expect from someone accustomed to intense physicality. Like in those moments, she could kind of relax into the physical stuff and not have to think about the acting as much, which made her performance that much more naturalistic. Also, how does someone have a career that revolves around getting punched manage to stay so hot? She's a knockout and has a great onscreen presence.

 

As for the plot: I wouldn't say it was boring, but it's just one of those stories where you have to accept that you're not going to know what the hell's going on till the very end. Once I settled into that, I had a much better time of it and enjoyed the very nicely-shot fight scenes. Great ending, as well. Loved the touch of Carano putting her hair in cornrows when she's 'at work'. 

This is old-ish (Jan 2012) but I only just listened to it last week. It's Gina being interviewed live after a screening, first by the host and then by audience members. It's pretty good fun (unless you're a Jeff Goldsmith hater probably (and apparently there are a few)).

http://www.theqandapodcast.com/2012/01/haywire-gina-carano-q.html

Jeff Goldsmith is the worst.  But I still listen when he's got good guests.

The plus side on this one is he hands it over the first 5 or 6 minutes to someone else so you don't have to suffer him the entire time. The other plus side is that Gina's charming as fuck.

I've watched this three times since it's release last year. Absolutely still a fan. I still love this exchange between Carano and Paxton;

"Dad, keep your eyes open"

Paxton in his absolute Bill Paxtoniest moment replies;

"I haven't shut them since you where born"

In the year when Expendables 2 was released, that's still the most gloriously 80's action movie moment of 2012.

I really dug Haywire.  I don't know what people were expecting when they went to see this.  I want more Carano and Paxton teamups.

Yeah, I found it a near-perfect film. The exceptions to the perfection for me were that lip-biting and some of the movements at the party with Fassbender. I know the lip-biting can be explained away as Mallory trying to disarm Aaron a little, but it still came off as overly cutesy to me. Same with Channing's lip biting. I mean, I don't want to come off as a lip-biting prude, and as an MMA nerd I've known of and been enamoured by Gina's infamous lip-bite gif for years, I just felt like it was wrong for that scene for a couple of no-bullshit killers to be flirting even after finding out later they'd already gotten jiggy with it.

The thing with the party if I remember rightly was the way Mallory was sneaking around by moving across open ground. Sneaking scenes in films can tricky I guess, because you have to convey that the character is staying out of sight, but she blatantly walked across the same ground she'd observed Fassbender cover moments earlier, which seemed uncharacteristically sloppy.

Apart from those momentary slips though, it was one of my favourite films of The Millenium so far and what the fuck is wrong with me that I haven't yet watched it again?



..
Edited by Bucho - 5/28/13 at 5:27pm

 

My date and I were in theaters opening weekend.  And we were crushed there was no Bond-esque "Mallory Kane Will Return" at the end.  It would so cool if they could have Soderbergh exec produce some low budget sequels helmed by up and coming action directors who are down with the Haywire action aesthetic.

I would Kickstart the shit out of that idea.

A John Hyams Haywire sequel. Not sure if my mind can handle that.