MMA fighter-turned-actress boosts convoluted 'Haywire' plot - Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

MMA fighter-turned-actress boosts convoluted 'Haywire' plot

The overwhelmingly male fan base for action films is always ready for a hot new femme fatale who can flaunt steel fists, heavy ordnance and really short skirts with equal flair.

Boys, meet Gina Carano.

Followers of professional mixed martial arts may already know her from her octagon exploits as Gina “Conviction” Carano, sometimes described as the “female face of MMA.”

And what a face — the dark smolder of a young Mariska Hargitay … if Mariska Hargitay had the ability to put her foot through your brain pan with a flying roundhouse kick.

Not to be too superficial, but the camera adores Carano — and in “Haywire,” her big-screen debut, director Steven Soderbergh wisely zooms in for as many close-ups as he can get away with.

Less heat is thrown off by the story itself, a routine stew of movie tropes about double- and triple-crosses amid shadowy foreign intrigue.

Writer Lem Dobbs knows this kind of material; his engrossing 2001 film “The Score,” with Robert DeNiro and Edward Norton, was a minor genre gem.

With “Haywire,” however, his only marching orders apparently were to build a just-substantive-enough launch vehicle for Carano — and that’s exactly what he’s done, no more, no less. As such, teaming him with a director like Soderbergh, who can be cool and clinical to the point of iciness, was probably less than ideal.

Still, Carano keeps it real, flashing a confidence that belies her status as an acting novice. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s surrounded by old pros Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas and Ewan McGregor.

Carano is former Marine Mallory Kane (she calls herself a “devil dog” in one scene), now a top operative for Kenneth (McGregor), who runs a “contracting” outfit specializing in the sticky international jobs that Uncle Sugar — represented here by Alex Koblenz (Douglas) — likes to handle off the books.

Mallory is sketched as a force of nature. “I’ve never done a woman before,” an assassin says. “I wouldn’t think of her as a woman — that would be a mistake,” another character replies.

Her bonafides are established in a breathless early scene when she pairs with Aaron (Channing Tatum, growing more hulkish with each film he makes while remaining as emotive as a pine board) to rescue a kidnapped Chinese dissident.

A convoluted plot then begins to form that has Kenneth, with help from fellow contractor Rodrigo (Banderas), betraying Mallory and setting up a hit on her.

The motivations in play are never made very clear. As he wrote the script, Dobbs at some point apparently became aware of the fuzziness factor, as he slips in a late scene in which Kenneth blithely declares: “It’s about money. It’s always about money.”

Thanks for clearing that up.

The script also has some snoozer sequences, none more so than a dinner-party scene at an Irish estate that crawls along for a good quarter-hour without much ever really happening.

But there are quite a few satisfyingly gritty moments, too, topped by a wild hotel brawl between Mallory and another operative named Paul (Michael Fassbender, who seems to be in everything lately; I think I spotted him in a crowd scene in “The Muppets”).

Mallory finally puts Paul to sleep with a thigh chokehold — a touch that surely will have many guys in the audience thinking there are worse ways to go.

There’s no escaping the unoriginal script’s familiarity. But “Haywire” ultimately rests squarely on Carano’s muscular shoulders, and she shows potential as the latest addition to our long and proud tradition of action-flick heroines.