The trailer below spells out the plot in rather spoilery detail, so I won't rehash it here except to say that there's far less action overall than the trailer would imply and that the dull parts aren't really filled with much in the way of deep characterization or intricate plot. While it's nice to have an action chick who doesn't look like she'll snap her arms throwing a punch (see: Angelina Jolie after Mr. & Mrs. Smith; Charlize Theron; Milla Jovovich; Zoe Saldana; Maggie Q) and to have fight scenes that don't rely so much on shakycam and edit fu, it never amounts to anything. The double-crosses and misdirections just keep things confusing as well as a superfluous flashback story structure - this could've been told in a linear fashion and may've made more sense, too.
Gina Carano has been dinged in some reviews for her performance, but considering the script is crap, I don't think much blame should be assigned to her. She looks and sounds remarkably like Linda Fiorentino, albeit a shorter, buxomer version who looks like she could actually fight. (She's a MMA fighter whom Soderbergh built this whole mess around.) It's indicative of how freakish "Hollywood beauty" is when a woman who looks like this...
...is considered fat. (She's 5'8" and fought at 143 lbs, but she was pretty ripped then; I'm guessing she's 10 lbs. heavier in the movie.) As I saw someone caption a sports-bra-and-shorts-clad weigh-in photo of her, "I'd hit it, but it might hit me back." Yep.
On top of the poor script and pacing which feels flabby at less than 90 minutes - more happens in a typical 42-minute episode of Nikita - is Soderbergh's craptastic cinematography under the nom de screen of Peter Andrews. He can shoot a decent looking frame as the Oceans' movies show, but too often (since Traffic) he prefers to shoot and grade so that everything is a single color like yellow or red. It's junk, not style. He says it's to provide guidance to the audience as to where things are, but compare his sloppy methods to movies like The Matrix where scenes in the Matrix are a sickly yellowish-green while the real world is blue-gray, but not totally those colors. (i.e. Underworld movies which are basically black, blue and white.)
I was seriously let down by Haywire, a movie that I'd planned on seeing in theaters and ended up glad I didn't waste money on.
Score: 4/10. Skip it or catch it on cable while you're multi-tasking.
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