Category — Lights, camera... action!

There’s an old adage in movies: if you introduce a gun, somebody’s going to get shot. Haywire inspires a related question: Why put Gina Carano in handcuffs if you’re not going to then make her fight a swarm of bad guys?

That’s just one of the more puzzling elements of the Steven Soderbergh-helmed spy thriller. Granted, I’m using the term “spy thriller” loosely.

Haywire is not the movie the trailers are trying to sell you, which is The Bourne Identity with boobs. Instead, it’s a soft-focus, low-key jazzy arthouse “fuck you” to quick-cut Michael Bayhem-style ADD action spectacles. It’s the anti-Bourne, a watered-down martini that leaves you neither shaken nor stirred.

And yet there’s something there, something in its ultra-cool ‘70s vibe that makes you forgive the by-the-numbers story, the sluggish pacing, the cheap made-for-cable quality. While the sum of Haywire’s parts adds up to a pilot for a TV series about a hot ass-kicking CIA super-agent, like Alias without all the glitz and glam and Jane Bond shine, it’s that very stripped-down pseudo-realism that provides the biggest punch.

The chases unspool with a determined this-is-what-it-would-really-be-like feel, while the fights deliver a degree of verisimilitude missing from 99 percent of on-screen fisticuffs. Nothing fancy, nothing CGI-enhanced, no wire fu. Just abrupt and brutal, punches, kicks, a couple of chokes. No actress could’ve pulled them off as well as Gina Carano. She is the first female action star you actually believe could beat up her larger, stronger male opponents. She throws a punch the way it should be thrown, and she takes one the same way. Stick Angelina Jolie in there and it would be like watching a stick figure on a string. And for the most part, Soderbergh just stands back and lets her do her thing.

On the acting side, Carano has charisma, charm and she mostly holds her own opposite heavyweight thesps like Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas. Occasionally she appears a bit out of her depth, although her acting never dips to porn-star levels, but she’s also not relied upon to deliver any great depth or emotion. And her voice, which was inexplicably digitally lowered in post-production, is only distracting in the first few moments and then only if you know what she really sounds like.

In the end, Haywire is not the explosive action debut many hoped it would be for Carano. What it is, though, is something smarter, a genre exercise that flexes some pretty big muscles. It’s more interesting than exciting, a diversion that’s both ponderous and worth pondering.

Still, it makes me wonder why the shackled Carano wasn’t called upon to battle her way out of that predicament. I guess that was one more cliché Soderbergh opted to avoid.

Bruce Lee was bad-ass, no doubt. But I don’t need Dana White or Jon Jones or Kobe Bryant or Mickey Rourke to tell me that. I don’t need talking heads and hagiography.

I want to hear more about his cultural impact, not just his pop cultural impact, about how he influenced culture in the 20th century, how he gave Asian men balls. But this will certainly lack depth and insight. And if the trailer is any indication, the archival footage of Lee won’t be anything we haven’t seen before.

I have high hopes for Haywire based on the talent involved (notably director Steven Soderbergh, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender) and the generally positive reviews and buzz its been getting from respected and serious-minded film critics (i.e. not guns-and-ammo movie fanboys or MMA knuckledraggers who consider 300 or Fast Five some kind of action apotheosis), not to mention the hotness and action chops of star Gina Carano.

Everything that I’ve seen and heard about the movie tells me that the action is lean and mean and grounded in reality. Or as real as Hollywood gets these days. No gravity-defying wire fu, no CGI-assisted leaps from rooftops to runaway trains. In other words, no death-defying Angelina Jolie bullshit.

This clip, roughly the first few minutes of the movie and featuring Carano fighting Channing Tatum, definitely prove that out. The fight is short and dirty and completely convincing. I believe that Carano’s character could kick Tatum’s ass. It doesn’t hurt that Carano doesn’t save herself single-handedly (there’s nothing like a good coffee pot to the skull to turn the tide of a losing battle).

The question mark, though, has always been Carano’s acting ability, or lack thereof. And this one scene is, well, amateurish and uncomfortable. It’s not much to go on, and it’s just one brief scene taken out of context, but egads! Hopefully the script lets the rest of the cast do most of the heavy lifting while Carano spends her time busting people up.

Simple, direct, a touch predictable, but no less affecting. Great tagline. Maybe it’s the pending holidays making me soft. Then again, I can’t help but wonder if they shot this with actors in East L.A. and those kids will pop up on a Friday night sitcom with Urkel as their dad.

The more I see of the Anderson Silva documentary Like Water, the less interested I am in actually watching the whole thing. I just don’t see any insight into Silva’s personality, character, motivations, etc. being delivered. No depth. I guess that’s what I’m sensing.

Gina Carano has confirmed every horndog guy’s fantasy about watching two women fight: that at any moment they could start tearing each other’s clothes off and making out in the middle of the cage. Or, as she put it in Bullett Magazine:

“I think that fighting is similar to sex in that people have to let their guards down—well, some people do and some people don’t. The secret is chemistry. When two people are attacking each other, that chemistry is definitely going to come out in an interesting way. When you fight someone, you share the experience with that one person, and you’re never going to have that experience with someone else—even in another fight. I always have this weird connection with them. It really is like we had sex. I’ll always know how many people I fought.”

I kind of see where Carano is coming from. Fighting is a very intimate and raw experience. I wouldn’t say fighting someone is like fucking them, but you’re certainly closer to them for having gone through (and put each other through) a traumatic experience.

Even among jiu-jitsu players, I know some who are uncomfortable rolling with the opposite sex, partially because women are smaller and weaker and won’t be able to hold their own, partially because all that grabbing and groping and triangles and north-south position and whatnot can short circuit our lizard brains. Then again, rolling with someone you’re sleeping with can be like foreplay, where getting the submission truly is secondary to getting position.

This trailer makes it look like director Steven Soderbergh is stuffing his Limey and Out of Sight style in a blender with a slab of Cynthia Rothrock, and that’s a very good thing. Already, there’s very positive buzz about the movie. Besides, Ewan McGregor is so misguided and wrong at the end of this clip: Carano power!