Haywire (2012)

Whenever you look at the poster of a movie and see something to the effect of "Starring Professional Athlete _____," it is seldom reason to have high expectations. A person crossing over from sports to acting is a risky venture that at best can seem gimmicky, and at worst can wind up being painful to watch. It's just hard to get excited about an athlete being in a movie.

Now, to be fair, this doesn't always end poorly. Vinnie Jones played European football. Schwarzenegger was a bodybuilder. UFC fighter "Rampage" Jackson made an awesome Mr. T. You've also got professional wrestlers like The Rock, Steve Austin and even Jessie Ventura who went on to be pretty decent actors. Plus, who could forget Andre The Giant in "The Princess Bride?" And of course there's NFL great Jim Brown of "The Dirty Dozen" fame. This isn't always a guaranteed tragedy...

Especially when you consider the incredible stew that former Oakland Raiders can get going.

...but then you've also got Michael Jorden, Hulk Hogan, John Cena, Dennis Rodman and Shaq. I don't care how many awesome action stars the sports world produces, there is no forgetting or forgiving the double whammy of "Steel" and "Kazaam." Say what you will about the rest of the bad actors the sports world has produced, at least Rowdy Roddy Piper could deliver awesomely bad one-liners. But with Shaq, you've got a guy whose film career killed the comic book movie genre for a decade. That puts a damper on the whole shebang. It's like saying The Galactic Empire was pretty decent apart from that whole Alderaan thing.

And do we even need to bring up "Shaq-Fu?"

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah. "Haywire."

Gina Carano is the athlete throwing her hand in the acting ring in this endeavor. The MMA fighter had only been in one film before, the Michael Jai White feature "Blood and Bone," although she was in "Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3" (true story). So for "Haywire," her first headlining role, they did what was either a brilliant or very stupid thing and surrounded her with a cast of some of the most amazing actors around. This my friends...is ballsy.

Think about it. You've got an untested athlete as your main role. Do you really want to put them on the screen next to Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton and Antonio freaking Banderas? Good gravy. If anyone is going to make a newbie look bad, it's these guys. At this point why don't they just throw in Liam Neeson, Morgen Freeman and James Earl Jones to make the bar even higher? Even co-star Channing Tatum, like him or hate him (I think he's pretty decent, actually) has a higher pedigree than Gina Carano. This is a pretty risky venture.

Imagine my surprise, then, when Gina actually managed to step up to the plate and hold her own next to the big dogs. I'm not saying that she's on the same acting level as Michael Fassbender, because it's not even close (although few are on his level), but it amazed me that she was as convincing as she was. She must have been getting some really good advice from her veteran co-stars, because the last thing she came across as was novice. She was confident and had a strong screen presence, which meant that "Haywire" was free to be what I was hoping it would be: a lot of fun.

"Best. Death. Ever."

"Haywire" is a spy movie in the same way that the "Bourne" series is. It's played on a more realistic level, so there's no super-gadgets, and the plot is always, without fail going to involve the hero getting double-crossed by their superiors. It's just the rule. If James Bond were played more "realistically" then they would need a new M each time because Bond would always have to end up killing them at the end of every movie because M would always sell Bond out. Because that wouldn't get old fast. It's actually more shocking if the spy actually has colleges that don't try to kill them.

Spy movie gripes aside, I found "Haywire" to be a very well made and entertaining film. Like I implied earlier, the plot is nothing you haven't seen before, since spy movies have such a rigid formula to their "twists and turns" that they are always laughably predictable, but it handles the story very well. Of course, the big reason most people would want to see it is to see an MMA fighter beating the snot out of A-list Hollywood actors. And that's another thing "Haywire" manages to do quite well.

The action scenes are really quite shocking with how convincing they are. They aren't as brutal as the "Bourne" series, despite those films having a PG-13 and this one having an R rating, but the hits all have a great impact to them. Every punch to the face or foot to the kneecap feels like it hurts. It looks so legit that I found myself wondering more than once if Gina Carano, who obviously did her own stunts, wasn't actually getting punched in the face. It would make sense considering her background, but still. Dang, that looked real.

 

 Ow.

Adding to the realism of the fight scenes was the fact that there really wasn't much, if any music going on during them. Any time Gina was fighting hand to hand, the only soundtrack was the hits and crashes of the actors destroying whatever room they happened to be in at the time. At first it wasn't noticeable, but eventually you do notice its absence, kind of like a void just sitting in the room with you. It doesn't detract or distract in any way, but it does add a uniqueness to the fight scenes which help them stand out from the slew of other movies that are very similar to it.

If I was going to complain about anything it would be two things. The first is that I was never fully on board with the way the exposition was handled. Basically, the first two acts of the film are a flashback of the last few days that Gina is relating to a dude whom she basically just kidnapped, I guess for the purposes of "If I don't make it back you have to tell someone what happened." Every once in a while we cut back to them in the car as the dude asks her "So then what happened?" As a plot device it works okay, but I never really saw the point of the dude she kidnaps. The movie really could have just been told chronologically.

The second thing that bugged me: the deer. That's all I'll say, but trust me when I say that your reaction will be "Well, that was random."

This thing is about to screw with you. Seriously.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I actually really liked "Haywire." I was drawn in by the cast, which contains some of my favorite actors ever, but I was pleasantly surprised with how well it all came together, something more than I was expecting considering the fact that the headlining star is an MMA fighter new to acting. It's a lot of fun. Recommended for a good solid action flick.