Review

Review Date: 22-January-12
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Haywire (2012), Underworld Awakening (2012)

The system of contrasting releases — e.g., opening the My Pretty Pony movie the same day as Stallone's latest shoot-'em-up so as not to split a target audience — was abandoned this weekend as Hollywood rolled out two films featuring sexy women who kick ass. Perhaps the films' genre differences were expected to appeal to different sub-populations of the ass-kicking-female fan group. In Haywire, director Steven Soderbergh sets out to showcase the skills of Gina Carano, a mixed martial arts champion who resembles a less vapid, brunette Britney Spears. As an actress Carano doesn't exhibit any emotional range, but she doesn't need it to play an ex-Marine working for a private company that does the government's dirty work. The plot, a rehash of other secret agent films, sends her from Barcelona to Dublin to New Mexico to (old) Mexico after an "easy" assignment results in her being framed as a rogue assassin. Along the way she outfights and outwits several men with familiar faces (Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, and Ewan McGregor, whose bad haircut signifies a bad heart), while enlisting the help of other men who love her (Bill Paxton as her father), want to use her (Michael Douglas as a DC desk agent), or just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (Michael Angarano as a schmo she hijacks in a diner).

Soderbergh uses a toned-down style — subdued music, no fancy camera work — that enhances the authentic feel of the fights, during which Carano is a real pleasure to watch. I only wish more imagination had been used on the story. The scenes meant to build suspense or sew up threads are either too long or too flat, and the way in which the heroine discovers she has been set up is plain silly. A movie about a woman who is resolutely not arm candy should feel less insubstantial.

The fourth installment in the Underworld series also feels insubstantial, but this is no surprise for an off-season action/monster movie. It uses a lot of gothic froufrou to create the appearance of substance, although the use of 3D adds nothing. Beckinsale returns as Selene, a vampire soldier with a Lycan (i.e., werewolf) lover. (Actually, he's a hybrid, but we needn't get into details since he's not an active character in this movie.) The backdrop for Awakening is that, having lived for centuries in the shadows of civilization, the warring vampires and Lycans were discovered by humans and systematically exterminated. Selene wakes up after a human attack to find that 12 years have passed during which she has been a subject in a human laboratory. She needs only seconds to locate her black vinyl body suit (handily preserved all those years) and bust out of captivity. Then she goes to figure out what's going on in the world, where her lover is, and why she is seeing visions through somebody else's eyes.

It's interesting to find humans as the bad guys in a vampire flick, but this idea is dropped in the second half. A kindly human cop (Ealy) helps Selene once she forms a plan, and the mad doctor behind her captivity (Stephen Rea, barely stifling a maniacal laugh) turns out to be less human than he appears. Because Selene's plan entails saving her miraculous newfound daughter (India Eisley), viewers might be concerned that she has gone soft. Fortunately, the entertaining conclusion dispels this worry as she cooly survives an elevator being dropped on her head and takes down a jumbo-sized werewolf with guns, guts, and grenades. The franchise does seem to be stretching for some way to remain viable, but as long as it keeps its spot in the January dead zone, I'm willing to welcome the next heavily foreshadowed chapter.

Copyright © 2012 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.