Haywire

The snow lays thick on the roadside by a small diner in upstate New York. A young man walks in and sits down to talk to a dark-haired young woman in the corner table. She watches him carefully until he tosses coffee in her eyes and assaults her. That’s when she strikes back. The results of the conflict leave the man crumpled on the floor, send the woman speeding through the woods with a newfound friend in a borrowed car and propel the narrative of Haywire forward with muscular tension.

The woman who drives this eminently satisfying new film from director Steven Soderbergh is Mallory Kane, an ex-marine now employed in her ex-boyfriend’s private contracting unit of spooks who take care of jobs that the US government would rather not be connected to, jobs that require a proficiency in gunplay, hand-to-hand combat and moving stylishly through European cities. She does her job quickly and efficiently, until she finds herself betrayed and has to set the record straight.

Mallory is a woman who makes the first move. She relaxes with wine and gun maintenance. She can wither a coworker’s callous remark with a quick stony glance. As she remarks about playing a wife in a mission with a new co-worker, “I don’t know how to play that. I don’t wear the dress—make Paul wear the dress.”

Lead actress Gina Carano brings to the table a short filmography but a long career of mixed-martial arts and kickboxing victories. This experience imbues a hearty and authentic physicality to her realization of Mallory. The fight scenes really crunch; instead of the quick cuts and shaky camera movements that have proliferated in thrillers since Jason Bourne, this film shows you the fights with enough space to observe the intricate tactical flow of punches and kicks, with the systematic destruction of hotel furniture thrown in for good measure. Furthermore, the action advances our understandings of the characters. When Mallory chases a “loose end” through the streets of Barcelona, she doesn’t stop or dodge to avoid an oncoming car—she simply vaults over the hood.

Haywire proves particularly rewarding when compared to the usual roles of women in spy movies. Instead of pursuing an existence solely directed at jumping into bed with James Bond, Mallory shows us what a smart, tough and eminently capable female operative looks like. Perhaps her wardrobe throughout the film reveals a bit too much of her curves to fully avoid the Bond-girl aesthetic, but her ability to out-punch, outsmart or generally out-badass a compelling cast of Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas and others may signify Soderbergh’s attempt to nudge the gender politics of the spy genre in the right direction. Let’s hope audiences, and, therefore, Hollywood, take notice.