Haywire: Film And Score Review

By: Arlene R. Weiss

Being a huge fan of action flick heroes Jason Statham, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Jet Li, I can’t say how excited I am that Director Steven Soderbergh has made this remarkable motion picture showcasing and built around a real life female action heroine who does all her own fighting and stunts.

After Soderbergh caught wind of real life, women’s mixed martial arts champion and radiant beauty, Gina Carano, Soderbergh was so impressed with Carano’s ability to “break you in half” as he told “Sports Illustrated Magazine”, that he and screenplay writer Lem Dobbs whipped up this sinfully delicious, spectacularly over the top, espionage soufflé, solely to showcase the incredible Carano.

Carano who also previously worked on TV’s “American Gladiators” more than easily holds her own with the big screen bad boys, as she handily dispatches and beats the living daylights out of them with the fluidly choreographed precision, prowess, and power of a graceful, yet ever so deadly, vicious panther.

Carano plays former Marine, covert Special Operative, Mallory Kane. The film opens with a stunningly brutal brawl in a small roadside diner between Kane and Aaron, (the always wonderful and much underrated Channing Tatum), a contact liaison sent to meet her on behalf of an as yet, undisclosed, higher up. Mallory proceeds to makes light work of Aaron. She then escapes with the help of a customer named Scott in his car, and as they drive, Mallory relates to Scott (Michael Angarano), through a series of flashbacks staged across the globe in lush, international locales including Barcelona, Dublin, and New York, that she has been set up in a mission gone terribly wrong, double crossed by her “employer”, Kenneth, (portrayed with oozing smarmy slime by the outstanding Ewan McGregor).

For “Haywire”, Soderbergh called on some of his most stellar, A-List acting colleagues to generously support Carano and shower their spotlight of star power on the budding newcomer actress to great effect.

A formidable Hollywood ensemble constellation of actors comprised of Michael Fassbender, Tatum, McGregor, Michael Douglas, and Antonio Banderas, all who are supreme, round out the duplicitous government contractors and agents who concoct a tangled web of deceit, murder, and cover ups that all lead to and erroneously point at Mallory.

As they mistakenly think that Kane will easily take the fall and be readily erased, instead she turns rogue and into an unstoppable, relentless force of strategic counterplay, stealth, and destruction, determined to find out who has betrayed her and to clear her good name. Pity the killer who takes on Mallory Kane. Armed with intelligence, strategic force and ferocity, and a death grip via the most lethal legs in cinema (a la a real life version of James Bond’s Xenia

Onatopp – google this!), Mallory leaves a trail of crumpled bodies in her wake.

Light on dialogue, wisely letting Carano’s feral physicality, fisticuffs, and acrobatics do the talking, and heavy on the hard hitting action, Soderbergh makes deft use of composer David Holmes’ sizzling, whip cracking score to authentically and compellingly voice much of the film.

Holmes, who first worked with Soderbergh, scoring 1998’s “Out Of Sight”, has enjoyed a particularly creative, ongoing professional relationship with the Director, with the two regularly collaborating together on several films, including 2001’s “Ocean’s Eleven” rat pack film remake and both of its sequels, “Ocean’s Twelve” and “Ocean’s Thirteen”.

The talented, Irish born film composer started out DJing in Ireland’s club scene, later running the two seminal night clubs Sugar Sweet and Shake Yer Brain in the Belfast Art College, and since 2009 Holmes has been running the South Belfast club, The Menagerie. Holmes earned his cred soaking up the pulsating backbeats and many diverse, multi-colored music textures that have flooded through the clubs, and on “Haywire”, he acquits himself superbly with this sparkling, effervescent score.

Holmes’ uniquely distinctive, stylish, uber chic, sophisticated score, spurs, paces, and all but narrates several extended key action sequences, often becoming the second most integral character in this smart and savvy film.

One particularly mesmerizing motif, Homes’ enthralling musical accompaniment set to a breathtaking chase scene in Dublin as a Swat Team pursues Mallory as she runs across the building rooftops, is just dazzling.

Holmes’ vividly colors his sonic orchestrations with a palette of stinging, tuned down, reverbed, twangy jazz guitars, chunky, dissonant percussion, and a cacophonous traffic jam of hepcat brass and horns. Then Holmes generously drenches his savory buffet of jazzy soundscapes in a river of funked up, thumping, full bottomed grooves voiced on wonderfully fat and flavorful bass guitar.

Interspersed throughout Holmes’ dynamic score are gently percolating, melodic keyboard phrasings, Mallory’s theme if you will, just to remind us who the real star of this show is.

Holmes has a real gift at recreating the evocative cool jazz influenced aural landscapes that hark back to the landmark 1960’s spy films of the cold war era conjuring up the sonic imagery and influential film scores of “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”, “Torn Curtain”, and of course, “James Bond”, with its legendary theme by Monty Norman.

Ultra cool and hip, imbued with luscious acid house, lounge jazz stylings, crafted with a flair, finesse, and panache worthy of “Haywire’s” main character, Holmes’ scintillating arrangements, spot on retro feel, and fabulously versed musical narrative, hold and drive the suspense, tension, and excitement of this action spectacular vehicle, sure to make a star out of the luminous Carano.

A stronger and less convoluted storyline, script, and character development could have made “Haywire” even more delectable. But the gorgeous Carano in her first time starring on the silver screen is more than amazing, a fierce, charismatic actress who has the “woman-chismo” thang so going on and is an undeniable force to be reckoned with. An action heroine who can rightfully take her place among such kickass female action film icons as Angelina Jolie’s Laura Croft and Diana Rigg’s Mrs. Peel of “The Avengers”.

Bravo to Soderbergh and Dobbs for crafting a luminescent, action movie, female role model that is strong, resilient, and intelligent.

Gina Carano, in her debut and breakthrough film performance, makes “Haywire” all her own in this phenomenal spy and action adventure tour de force, making her more than worthy of the title, titan and tigress of action movies. Beautiful, bold, and oh so badass to the core.