Haywire
I picked this up on dvd when it came out. I was psyched about it. You know how it is, though. Getting to sit down to watch it with other priorities at the time kind of placed the movie on the backburner. It sits on your shelf for a few weeks then it pops into your brain. I had fun with it. Nothing spectacular storyline-wise. Soderbergh's movie basically felt like a Bourne movie with a female in the lead instead of the intense male figure.
She knows who she is so that isn't related, but in terms of how the fights are shot and edited, the hand to hand combat in small confined spaces where objects and furniture, the surroundings, are used as weapons not just body parts, the legs and fists, the chops to the torso, to the throat, the skull (vases and ketchup bottles are broken over heads yet those on the receiving end remarkably bounce back without much hesitation) are also of course the movie's bread and butter in terms of human fight action.
There is an escape through Dublin as the police (dressed like SWAT) are after her and she takes to the rooftops. Evasive maneuvers, climbing through windows, into alleyways, etc. She also has a nice, lengthy chase of a "loose end" through streets into an alley in Barcelona (after an orchestrated rescue of a kidnapped journalist).
All those names, Michael Douglas, Bill Pullman, Antonio Banderas, and even Ewan Macgregor, are used more for marketing. Her best moments come with Channing Tatum (the girls in the office I work swoon for him; they were chatting about Magic Mike coming up featuring him as a male stripper, with one of them saying she would have a baby with just any man but he is definitely one of them!) and Michael Fassbinder (this guy is in everything these days!)
I stopped in at my uncle's place last week, and he was watching this. I knew nothing about it at all. I came in right as that fight-scene you've capped, there, was starting. It's one of the best movie fight scenes I've ever encountered. The chase that immediately follows it is great, too. I told my uncle I wanted to borrow the flick when he was finished, but I haven't been back for it yet. I probably should.
ReplyDeleteIt is fun if not that deep. The fight choreography is stellar. The action scenes deliver. The plot itself is somewhat uninspired, more of a link between action scenes.
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