Steven Soderbergh has a strong reputation in film making, which allows for him to make a movie like "Haywire". He can simply pick up the phone and ask his friends to show up, which allows for him to attract a talented cast to support the unknown star of the film, Gina Carano.
The story begins with freelance covert operative Mallory (Gina Carano) entering a diner and is soon confronted by Aaron (Channing Tatum) who is there to take her into custody. Their past is yet unknown, but after the first of many impressive fight scenes she escapes with one of the customers in the diner. It isn't entirely clear why she kidnaps Scott (Michael Angarano who was also in "Red State"), but she starts telling her story to him anyways as they start out on a road trip.
The majority of the film is told as a flash back telling the events that lead up to the confrontation in the diner. After a mission to rescue a hostage in Barcelona with Aaron, Mallory is quickly dispatched on another mission to Dublin to work with Paul (Michael Fassbender who was also in "Shame", "X-Men: First Class" and "Jane Eyre" recently). When the operation goes awry and Mallory finds she has been double crossed, she needs to use all of her skills, tricks and abilities to escape an international manhunt, make it back to the United States, protect her family, and exact revenge on those that have betrayed her.
The other notable performances in the film come from Ewan McGregor ("Beginners") as the backbone and handler to the covert missions; along with Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas as two parts of the business side to the missions that are looking to clean things up for themselves. You don't really know who you can trust, but you know none of them are up to anything good.
The film didn't seem to flow as well as it possibly should have, but finds an impressive way to hold your attention. The lack of proper character development, and an overly simplified script, leads one to not care for the lead character. Which is a shame given the performance that Gina Carano delivers in her debut. Certainly seeing a woman getting hit by a guy is difficult to watch, but one of the lines in the film says it all "thinking of her as a woman would be a mistake". The fighting and chase sequences are very well done, but as a complete film it is lacking a real punch to grab the audience.
The moment in the film that got the largest reaction from the audience was actually laughter during the car chase scene, which I don't want to spoil for anyone (comment with your reaction). The ending was too convenient and easy for Mallory, which leaves the audience wanting more. Everything was moving in different directions, but she conveniently appeared where each of her targets was comfortably living.
I am struggling between two ratings for this film, but after some time to absorb what I saw I think that it is a 2 Quack film. I give Gina Carano a lot of credit for her debut performance. She performed extremely well and shouldn't be judged for a script that was lacking and hand-cuffed her at times.
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