Movie Review: Haywire (2012)

Violence has never looked better.

Gina Carano is badass. She stars in Haywire with a slew of excellent Hollywood male specimens, and beats the crap out of most of them. Her Mallory Kane is a sympathetic character -- she's smart, capable, beautiful, and a decent human being. Director Steven Soderbergh teams up with composer David Holmes, which is why the soundtrack is very Ocean's Eleven. Soderbergh also chooses to cut the music during fight scenes, so the sounds of grunting and fist meeting face and foot saying hello to solar plexus and body hitting the ground are available in their full, painful glory. There's plenty of tension, lots of shadiness, and, surprisingly, a ton of laughs. The target of Kane's wrath definitely isn't laughing as she races up behind him, but the audience was howling in anticipation of a righteous beating. And whoo, does Kane deliver!

Oh, and there might have been a plot in there somewhere.