Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Haywire (2011) - Soderbergh's taut, stylish ensemble actioner is a masterpiece

5/26/2015

Haywire (2011) - Soderbergh's taut, stylish ensemble actioner is a masterpiece

♥♥♥♥♥♥

1 Time Film Excess Award Winner:

Best Practical Effects

4 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Film (lost to The Descendants)
Best Director: Steven Soderbergh (lost to Agnieszka Holland for In Darkness)
Best Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh (lost to Phedon Papamichael for The Descendants)
Best Practical Effects (won)

+ Best Breakthrough of the Year (Gina Carano)
+ Sexiest Movie of the Year
+ Most Undeserved Flop of the Year

The appropriately stylish, cool poster for Steven Soderbergh's Haywire

Mallory is an American assassin and a damned skilled one at that. On a job in Barcelona, she gets set up. - And when she kills the British agent, whose mission it was to kill her, things have really gone haywire!

Real-life MMA-fighter Gina Carano (Blood and Bone (2009)) is deeply impressive and a wagonload of cool in her starring debut as an actress, and not just in the fight scenes, which are masterly choreographed. Master director and cinematographer Steven Soderbergh (The Informant! (2009)) creates striking images with minimal use of lighting, which plays neatly with David Holmes' (Ocean's Thirteen (2007)) score that seduces with bulging, cool 70s-like percussion. The sound side features lots of periods of bold uses of silence, and the noiseless aspect of Haywire is liberating, since modern action movies in general seem to have cultivated a bad habit of reveling in being as infernally noisy as possible.
Haywire is consistently stylish, self-conscious in its teasing us cinephiles playfully. It is a huge pleasure to watch it, and its ending is the coolest that has come around in any film in a long while.
Haywire is written by Lem Dobbs (The Score (2001)). Although Soderbergh has made many great films in recent years, this is his best in a long while. It is a raw, girl-power-infused martial arts action gift. - Yeah!

Related posts:

Steven Soderbergh: Side Effects (2013) - Modern people screw up in excellent thriller
Behind the Candelabra (2013) - Restraint and extravagance
Magic Mike (2012) - Soderbergh and Tatum score big with cheeky male strip romp
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
Contagion (2011) - Soderbergh's global pandemic creep-out
Che Part One - The Argentine (2008) - Soderbergh's sober depiction of the Cuban revolution
Solaris (2002) - A suffering space question mark

Gina Carano in camouflage in Steven Soderbergh's Haywire

Cost: 23 mil. $
Box office: 33.3 mil. $
= Huge flop
[The public didn't respond warmly to Haywire, and many have even ridiculed Carano's great performance in it. A sophisticated, highly intelligent, polished piece of super-entertainment with a female hero for the decade of course is quite an unpleasant shock... After an opening weekend of 8.4 mil. $, it ended up grossing 18.9 mil. $ in the US (57 % of its total gross).]

What do you think of Haywire?

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William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

William Hurt has passed away

Born in Washington D.C., Hurt's first film role was the lead in Altered States (1980). Later credits include Body Heat (1981), The Big Chill (1983), Gorky Park (1983), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), for which he earned his only Oscar as Best Actor; Chilrdren of a Lesser God (1986), for which he was also Oscar-nominated; Broadcast News (1987), for which he was again Oscar-nominated; Smoke (1995), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), A History of Violence (2005), for which he was again Oscar-nominated; The Good Shepherd (2006), Into the Wild (2007), Robin Hood (2010) and many more. Hurt passed away at age 71. R.I.P.

Ivan Reitman has passed away

Born in Chechoslovakia, now Slovakia, Reitman's family fled the Soviet regime to Austria, then Toronto, when he was 4 years old. Reitman broke into movies as a director with Foxy Lady (1971). Later credits include Cannibal Girls (1973), Meatballs (1979), Stripes (1981), Ghostbusters (1984), Twins (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Junior (1994), Father's Day (1997), Evolution (1998), No Strings Attached (2011), Draft Day (2014) and more. Reitman's son Jason Reitman is also a great filmmaker. Reitman passed away at age 75. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (5-24)

5/26/2015

Haywire (2011) - Soderbergh's taut, stylish ensemble actioner is a masterpiece

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