Haywire (2011) - When an MMA cage fighter gives acting a shot

My dad is a karate instructor with over fifty years of training under his belt – so suffice to say I have grown up watching a lot of action movies featuring some of the finest martial arts captured on film. Naturally, I love it when there is a strong, arse kicking female in the title role, but it happens all too rarely and nine times out of ten the leading lady is just an actress with a couple of quick training sessions and a good stunt double and I end up leaving the cinema fairly disappointed. But Haywire is different, featuring renowned MMA cage fighter Gina Carano, the action (and arse kicking) is as real as it gets.

Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) is a skilled operative working as a security contractor for the US government. After she is betrayed by her own agency and becomes the target of a pack of assassins, Mallory seeks to find out the truth and get a bit of payback.

Now, that description is intentionally vague, any further elaboration can become a little spoiler heavy.

This film really does a lot right. It has an outstanding cast with Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton, Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas. Channing Tatum is in there too, and while I can’t in good conscious include him in the same sentence as the term ‘outstanding cast’, I can say he is not too offensive to the art in this film. Gina Carano also holds her own surprisingly well. I mean, she isn’t going to see an Oscar nomination anytime soon, and director Steven Soderbergh did digitally alter her voice in post, but as far as action stars go she definitely has the chops.

Generally action films with female protagonists don’t sell well. Normally it is because the women are overly sexualised and the whole film just feels like a tongue in cheek hoax. But Soderbergh did a great job with Carano’s character here. At no point in the film did she use her femininity or sexuality as a trap for her male counterparts; she held her own and believably beat these men to a pulp, which is a really admirable point. The fight scenes are completely authentic and the film is better for it. And by that I mean, Gina Carano was actually thrown into, and completely shattered, a television, and Michael Fassbender ready did have a vase thrown at and broken on his head. Throughout the film it genuinely feels like you’re watching skilled martial artists have it out. As a further indicator of Carano’s bad-arsery, Fassbender had to be padded up to take her hits.

Like any action film, Haywire definitely has its cheesier moments and the plot isn't incredibly strong (although not particularly weak either) and at times you’re left thinking, ‘really Soderbergh, you went there?’ but all in all it’s a heap of fun. Unfortunately this is another film that is not getting an Australian theatrical release, but watch out for its inevitable blu-ray release later in the year.