Movie Summary of Haywire by Michael The Moviegoer.

HAYWIRE = *1/2

“The Girl With No Tattoo”

Studios traditionally release their best films in November and December as awards bait. That’s why January ends up being the dumping ground for releasing films with no awards prospects at all. Rarely do those films come from major big-name directors with the clout, and ego, to force a year-end awards campaign for their work. January 2011 saw the release of Ron Howard’s biggest misfire “The Dilemma”. This year, that unlikely and unfortunate misfire comes from Steven Soderbergh. In a career spanning more than two decades, I don’t think I’ve ever truly disliked any of Soderbergh’s films, until “Haywire”.

The chameleon-like Soderbergh has given us so many great films over the years including “Traffic”, “Erin Brockovich”, “The Informant” and last year’s “Contagion”. I even admire his experimental phases such as “Full Frontal” and “Bubble”. But that Soderbergh seems to be entirely absent from “Haywire”.

This is a collage of better films by other directors who are probably all Soderbergh admirers. Most notably, “Haywire” plays like a B-picture exploitation mash-up of “The Bourne Identity”, “Kill Bill” and “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”. All much better films.

In “Haywire”, real-life female martial arts champion Gina Carano stars as Mallory Kane. If you’re looking for a summary of this film’s plot, you should probably try searching elsewhere. I’m not even sure if the actors themselves understand the plot.

“Haywire” is one long globe-hopping international chase-to-the-death in which, one can assume, Carano is doing her own stunts. The gender-flipped concept of female combatants isn’t even fresh here, and to see it done best you should see Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill”.

Although this is a showcase for Carano, there are many famous-face cameos such as Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor and Michael Fassbender. And none of them seem to understand the plot, so they’re just phoning in their performances.

DVD Double Feature:

Steven Soderbergh rarely works in the genre of the action/crime/thriller. But back in 1998 he did get it right once. In “Out Of Sight” George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez play a fugitive and a U.S. Marshall in love and on the run. This may be a great time to revisit this exciting film.

Michael The Moviegoer