If you are going to have an action film with almost no story then you need to deliver wall to wall action to make up for it. Haywire does not do this.

Haywire follows Mallory (Gina Carano), a spy for hire who is burned by the agency she works for and framed for a murder she did not commit. After surviving an attempt on her life, she goes on the run and, after being attacked in a diner by a former partner (Channing Tatum), takes the fight to the people who burned her, namely her ex boyfriend and head of the agency Kenneth  (Ewan McGregor) and Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas) who hired the agency initially. This sounds promising in terms of setting up action but with maybe four solid action scenes in the movie the bulk of the film is made up of talking about what is going on. Sadly, that is not much.

The structure of the movie is very strange, opening on the diner and then being told in flashback as Mallory tells a diner patron her story while she drives his car away. When the car ride is abruptly ended, the film switches to ‘real time’ and we follow Mallory as she takes her revenge. As mentioned above, that revenge is not taken by the awesome action scenes that we are teased with but rather cell phone conversations and ponderous shots of not much at all.

The fight scenes that we are treated to, as rare as they may be, are stunning. Carano, a MMA fighter, handles the fights beautifully and the choreography is enormously intense and interesting. The hits are solid and the moves showcase MMA in a way we haven’t seen in films up until now and it is very cool to see. If there is a problem at all with these fight scenes it is that they are so good that we want more instead of shots of Michael Douglas on the phone. Don’t get me wrong, Douglas does a fine job as always but that is not what I want to see out of an action film.

Steven Soderbergh is one of my favorite directors and I have always been impressed by his ability to do indy style films as well as mainstream films with little or no discrepancy in quality. Here, he tries to blend the two together and it is a mess.  I am not really sure if it is him or the script but there is really no excuse for the lack of balance here and if there was a story to hang all of the conversations on it would be fine. Likewise, if there had been more action it would have been fine. As it is, I have not seen a movie with so much talking about so little plot in my life. Furthermore, the cast is pretty incredible and it is completely underused here.

Carano does fine with the action scenes and the fighting but whenever she is called upon to deliver lines she is pretty terrible. Her delivery is wooden and lifeless and she looks fairly uncomfortable. Given the majority of the movie is her delivering lines, this really doesn’t work. You put her across from Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor and Antonio Banderas and it is even more obvious. When Channing Tatum is acting circles around you, that is a real problem. She is gorgeous and great at action but a dialogue heavy picture is really not for her.

The pacing of the film is way off as well. Haywire runs 93 minutes but it honestly feels much longer. Frankly, the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings films feel like they fly by in comparison. So much time is spent waiting for something to happen it is essentially like waiting in line for an a hour for a carnival ride that is over far too quickly only in this case you are forced to listen to conversations about nothing in particular.

Conclusion [5.5 out of 10]

I am really not sure where the praise for this movie comes from outside of the pedigree of the director but it more or less did the opposite of what an action movie is supposed to do. The viewer really shouldn’t forget halfway through the movie that it is meant to be an action picture. The action,when it does happen, is definitely very good and is worth seeing if the movie is on cable but I cannot recommend the film based on those scenes alone as they are far too infrequent and drowning in a sea of dull conversation. Haywire is really heartbreaking as it could have been so much better but as it stands it is just a badly paced, poorly plotted with occasional flash of brilliance. Add in the lead’s lackluster performance and you have a movie that should definitely be missed.