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| Review: Haywire |
| Film |
Gina Carano is a name which means little to most people outside the rather select fanbase of women’s Mixed Martial Arts, but her fighting credentials are impeccable and it certainly shows.
A somewhat uninspired plotline involving a special ops private contracting organisation and some hackneyed and predictable double-crossing provides the backdrop to showcase Gina’s superb skills. Crisp and technical, her fight scenes are a joy to watch. Well-shot too, as the irritating trend for filming fight scenes from under one of the combatant’s armpits appears to have been mercifully abandoned. There is, of course, nothing new about badass female characters. Movies are riddled with attractive but deadly women most of whom consider themselves a great blow for feminism as they strongly, and independently pander to the fantasies of teenage boys. However, action girls tend to tear mercilessly through hordes of male opponents barely chipping their impeccable nail varnish. Carano, on the other hand competes with male opponents as equals rather than as a vastly superior being. Sadly however, the virtues of these fight scenes do not come close to covering over the other faults of the film. Carano is distressingly wooden and not yet comfortable with displaying the nuances of a character. She is not an emotionless Terminator, but, one feels this might have been a better use of her talents. It felt like yet another script churned out by the great Hollywood machine, utterly devoid of personality, full of holes reeking of a lack of effort. This plot requires rather a lot of screen time to advance, so the fights are few and far between, meaning the audience can twiddle its collective thumbs for around an hour of utterly forgettable acting. McGregor is certainly not bad but the material is totally unworthy of him and the other legitimate actors. Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas’ few scenes smack all too much of shoe-horning another big, crowd-drawing name into a plot with all the emotional development of the Beano. Still, Carano’s action is fantastic and I sense a new female action star may have been conceived if not yet born. Newer news items:
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