Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Assemble.

The day finally came.  After 11 years and 22 of my top 22 favorite films of all time, we’re in the Endgame now.  Even with all my hatred of people and crowds, my excitement and impatience would not allow me to wait long to see it.  But Infinity War set a very high bar for the MCU.  There was certainly no way they could pass that, or even blow it completely out of the water, right?  Well there’s only one way to find out.  Well, by the time of writing this, two ways because I’ve already seen it twice.  And even though the second time was today, I feel like I’m itching to see it again.  But what did I think of the movie, you might be asking?  …Really?  Have you never read one of my reviews or seen one of my videos?  Well here’s my probably entirely predictable review of Avengers: Endgame, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, and starring…like everyone.  Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Josh Brolin, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Bradley Cooper, and so many more names.

Thanos (Brolin) won and wiped out half of all life in the universe with the snap of shiny, bejeweled fingers.  Even though they were thoroughly trounced by Thanos by himself, the remaining Avengers – Captain America (Evans), Hulk (Ruffalo), Thor (Hemsworth), Black Widow (Johansson), and War Machine (Cheadle) – as well as the two remaining Guardians of the Galaxy – Rocket (Cooper) and Nebula (Gillan) – decide it would be a good idea to take another crack at it because the new girl, Captain Marvel (Larson) claims to be super strong.  Iron Man (Downey) decides to stay home because he’s sleepy.  So the Avengers set off to … avenge.  And all of this is the first half hour.  Pretty much anything else is a spoiler.

Y’know what?  Avengers: Endgame could’ve been better.  …Don’t get me wrong, it was the greatest movie of all time ever, but I’m sure there’s something that could’ve been improved.  I was able to think of at least one, but we’ll get to that.  But a movie that contains as much hype as this movie has and I only really had one gripe?  That’s a killer flick!  Problematically for the sake of this review, I don’t think it’s worth talking about without spoilers.  Pretty much the entire movie after the first half hour is spoilers, so if that is a problem for you, feel free to stop reading and come back after seeing it.  Otherwise, let’s dish!

The story of Endgame was fantastic.  Time travel is a tricky thing to pull off and even the most well thought out stories can probably fall apart if you think about things too much.  Endgame does a good job of avoiding talking too much about the science involved so it can’t be picked apart too badly.  Science probably can’t prove that you can’t travel through time by shrinking down to sub-microscopic levels and entering the Quantum Realm because those things probably can’t happen in the first place.  And if you’re going into Avengers looking for good science to occur in the movie about superheroes, then what’s wrong with you?  The story obviously does leave some questions that may or may not be addressed.  What happened with past Loki?  What happens later when Hydra thinks Cap is one of them?  What changed when Cap decided to stay in the past?  In the very least, it seemed like these choices were intentional and may be leading to something.  The MCU has earned my faith in them.  And what’s more is that the time travel stuff added to what this movie really was deep down: fan service.  It was the most fan servicey movie ever, and I loved them for it.  There were callbacks to earlier movies (including what I say is the best moment of the film: when Falcon’s voice crackles through the radio when all hope seems lost and calls back to Captain America: The Winter Soldier when he says, “On your left.”)  And then when they start getting into time travel, we’re literally taken on the greatest montage/flashback in cinema history!  We go into Avengers, we go into Guardians of the Galaxy, and we go to shortly after Captain America: The First Avenger.  We see the filmmakers saying, “Remember this?  Oh you loved this!”  And we also see extra stuff, like how and why Loki got that gag mask in Avengers and what were the sorcerers that are supposed to be defending our realm doing during the Battle of New York.  You could also say that the death of Thanos in the beginning of the movie was not too surprising.  I mean, the team is in a spaceship heading off to kill Thanos in the first half hour, but we all know this movie is 3 hours.  They probably should’ve run the credits after killing Thanos and treated the rest of the movie as the best after-credit sequence ever.

I generally talk about the look of the movie here, but they put so much time and money into this movie it’s not worth talking about.  It was great.  I guess the only thing worth saying about it is that people often complain about CG characters and how they’re not realistic or compelling.  Avengers already got rid of that idea with Infinity War, making Thanos a very realistic and well-acted CG character, so much so that you could be forgiven for forgetting he wasn’t really there.  This movie continues that with Thanos, but also does the same level of quality with the Hulk.  So instead of talking about the look of the movie, I’m just gonna list the most exciting moments that I wrote down during that last fight.  And I’ll write them just as I wrote them in my notes.  Cap and Mjolnir!  Chips are down!  ON. YO. LEFF!!  Assemble! Rescue and Iron Man!  Wasp called him, “Cap!”  INSTANT KILL!  A-FORCE!!  CAPTAIN MARVEL!  I AM IRON MAN!!  …I straight up got goosebumps just typing those.  …I’m gonna go see it for a third time…

The cast of the movie was…well it was everything.  If you ever appeared in an MCU movie before, you probably showed up in this movie in some way or another.  You can get mentioned and shown in pictures like the Dark Elves from Thor: The Dark World or you can appear in unused footage with some new voiceover like Natalie Portman did or you can straight up appear in some degree like Tessa Thompson, Rene Russo, John Slattery, Tilda Swinton, Hayley Atwell, Marisa Tomei, Taika Waititi, Angela Bassett, William Hurt, Winston Duke, Maximiliano Hernandez, Frank Grillo, Jacob Batalon, Robert Redford, Ross Marquand, Callan Mulvey, Sean Gunn, James D’Arcy, and even Ty Simpkins, the little kid from Iron Man 3 that’s all grown up and appears at Tony’s funeral but even I didn’t figure it out until I got to the parking lot.  (In my defense, I didn’t care for Iron Man 3 much and don’t rewatch it often)  So many people you couldn’t possibly ask for more, to the point where they even had Wong say, “You wanted more?”  …Here’s my thing…  Yes, you gave us so many people.  Almost everybody!  …ALMOST!  There’s so many that I know I shouldn’t complain, but this is the end of an era, man!  I think you should’ve found a home for everyone.  At least everyone that’s still alive in the continuity.  But what about Lady Sif?  She’s still alive as far as I know.  What about some Nova Corps action?  Where was Adam Warlock?  What about the Skrulls?  Anybody from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., like Quake or Agent Coulson?  I’m not caught up on that show, but past Coulson could’ve appeared.  I’m not like most people in thinking that this was the time for X-Men to show up now that Marvel has the rights.  It would’ve been too rushed and the MCU really should build to them properly.  But biggest of all would be the Defenders.  I know the Netflix series are cancelled and Marvel’s not looking to bring them back, but this would’ve been one hell of a sendoff.  Just having Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and the Punisher step out of a portal together?  Tell me that wouldn’t have blown your mind!  And it would’ve been easy!  If those actors wouldn’t have agreed to get into wardrobe and step in front of a green screen looking determined, those actors are silly people!

Now let’s go through the main cast.  They are all still amazing at this, and I’m gonna be sad to see some of them go.  Though thankfully for my tear ducts, not too many of them had to die.  I think only 2 big ones.  Downey’s Tony Stark being the biggest one, obviously.  Man I cried so hard the first time I saw the movie!  And only maybe 10% less on the second viewing.  I didn’t see it coming really.  I was convinced that Captain America was going to die and Tony was going to retire, but they flipped it on me.  Tony bothered me in the beginning.  I really liked his relationship with Nebula, but when he gets home he starts being a real douche for no reason.  He claims Cap wasn’t there when he needed him.  I saw Infinity War, Tony!  Everyone was begging you to call Steve, but you just never got around to it!  I understand his motivations for not wanting to get involved when they found a possible solution, but I feel like everyone knew that Tony wouldn’t be able to resist if someone posed an interesting enough theory to him.  It was just a matter of time.  And finally, Tony’s sendoff was perfect.  Retirement would never be good enough for him, and if he was going to have to go, it should be by saying, “I am Iron Man,” and saving the day.  And the funeral was perfect, from the cast involved in it, to the music and presentation, to the wreath with the proof that Tony has a heart.  Speaking of send offs, Cap’s was perfect as well.  I was expecting a noble death, but his noble life was even better.  I loved the “Hail Hydra” moment and the fight with himself, and I especially loved America’s Ass.  …I mean the line!  I wasn’t staring at his ass…  Most of the joy of Captain America was in the final fight, how even as possibly the weakest of the three heroes that started it; Cap was the one holding his own the most.  And holding Mjolnir!  I squealed with glee at that moment!  And then how he used it!  Calling in lightning, spinning it like Thor, throwing it at his shield in midair!  Perfect!  And finally, after all these years, he says, “Assemble!”  Though it raises questions, I really enjoyed his ending.  He finally got that dance with his best girl.  It makes you wonder now where second Cap was through all these other situations as you assume he wouldn’t be able to just lay low and hide knowing he could help, but whatever.  I’m kind of on the fence about him handing the shield off to Falcon.  I know that happens in the comics, and I know Sam is an honorable dude, but I feel like you go with Bucky.  He can be Captain America, from the strength and the history and the fighting ability.  Falcon can’t do what Cap could.  Falcon should be Falcon.  But whatever.  It’s fine with me.

I was bummed and surprised at what happened with Black Widow.  Having heard she had a movie coming, I was not expecting what happened to her.  On second viewing, hearing her say, “See you in a minute,” before they head back in time was heartbreaking.  But anyone watching Hawkeye and Widow head to Vormir after having seen Infinity War probably had a sinking feeling in their gut.  I was personally hoping that the self-sacrifice aspect would be a loophole.  I mean, we’ve only ever seen someone sacrifice someone else.  Thanos threw Gamora in there and Thanos got the stone for it.  Widow threw herself in there, so Widow should get the stone.  And then the Soul Stone says, “Well…ya got me.”  The other hope I have is ongoing because, besides wondering what happens when Cap is returning the stones and goes to Vormir and sees his old buddy Red Skull there, what happens when the Soul Stone is returned?  Is the soul returned?  Maybe we’ll see…  Thor continues to be a joy since Ragnarok.  It was very funny, and very fitting, to see fat Thor, drowning in self-loathing as he would be.  And he got to have a lovely moment with his mom.  I was kind of hoping that his magic, armor-up, beard-braiding action transformation might Hemsworth him up a little and bring that sexy back, but it’s fine.  He’ll get there.  I also felt like they used Captain Marvel well.  They didn’t make her too over-powered and didn’t make her just save the day easily when she decided to show up, and they also explained well why she wasn’t going to be around to save the day every time because she’s busy in space.  And she set up a moment I loved.  First, her little interaction with Peter Parker was adorable, but then that leads to the assembly of A-Force, or all the women heroes of Marvel, getting together for a save the day push.  I love me some badass ladies, and they put so many of them in one frame that I nearly passed out.  I would say that part of me found it a bit pandering because why in the context of the movie would only the ladies decide to make a stand.  We’re all equal on this battlefield and everyone was all spread out, but all these ladies just ran to the same point to do some work.  But who cares?  It was awesome!  Speaking of awesome, Scarlet Witch versus Thanos!  At that moment, I wasn’t even thinking about how much I wanted to see that, but then it happened and it was epic.  And Tom Holland.  His activity in this movie was somewhat limited by the whole dead thing, but it should be noted that this kid is such a damned good actor.  His death in Infinity War and his reaction to Tony’s death here were so heartbreaking!  I felt worse for Peter than I did for Pepper, and Pepper is his wife and mother of his child! For two other tiny points, I loved Nebula’s character ark.  She’s really becoming likable. I just wish when Cap called Thanos a son of a bitch that Nebula would chime in and say, “Actually, my grandmother was a lovely person…”  And he wasn’t in there much, but I wish Doctor Strange’s line was, “If I tell you, it won’t happen…but trust me, the whole thing is going to be an awesome spectacle.”

Now, you’ve been waiting through a lot of fangasming to see the payoff of a tease I mentioned in third paragraph and never paid off.  What is the one problem that I had with Avengers: Endgame?  It sucks to have something built up and built up and never pay it off, doesn’t it?  …Well too bad!  Moving on!

I’m kidding.  THE HULK!  That was my one problem with this movie!  Infinity War sets up Hulk’s inability to transform and help the team SO HARD and never pays it off.  It gave me blue balls!  …Or in this case, green balls, I guess.  And it just ended on that!  So of course I spend an entire year dreaming of what that moment will be where the chips are down and everything looks like it’s lost and then Falcon says, “On your left,” and Hulk transforms and turns the tide.  It would have to be some epic moment, right?  After all that build up?  …NOPE!  This movie starts and he’s just Hulk already.  Granted, he’s Hulk AND Banner, which is cool, but he just figured it out off screen in a bland, science moment we never saw and all that build up to nothing.  Well then certainly we’ll have some great moment for him in the big fight where almost everyone has a big moment then, right?  …NOPE!  I think I saw him once, and he punched something insignificant off camera and was never seen again.  I will grant you that technically the greatest moment for me in the film happens because of the Hulk.  If he hadn’t sacrificed his arm to snap then no heroes return moment.  I also grant you that his arm was hurt so he wouldn’t be as big of a factor in the fight.  But I’m not asking him to be the one that defeats Thanos, but give him something!  In Infinity War, Banner had a very hard time in his fight against Cull Obsidian because he had to rely on the Hulkbuster armor.  Why could we not have the moment when Cull is walking up on Iron Man but the Hulk drops down, makes some quip about beating him with one hand tied behind his back, and whoops that ass?  Well we couldn’t because Cull was stepped on by Ant-Man as a throwaway gag.  I don’t need Hulk to save the day or win the movie or absorb the gamma radiation he said the glove gives off to become Worldbreaker Hulk or anything, but you guys set it up and let it fizzle out and that was a real bummer that stuck with me after the movie.  …The one and only bummer, so you guys still did an amazing job.

So that’s it.  A decade long setup leading to a seemingly decade long review written by me.  And all of it paid off perfectly.  At least from Avengers: Endgame.  This review?  Fine at best.  But Endgame was the perfect fan service movie that included characters and references from nearly all of their 21 movies leading to this moment that in no way disappointed.  Well, in one way disappointed because of the Hulk thing, but if your movie is 2 hours of solid fan service followed by one hour of back to back hype moments and I leave with only one minor bummer as a Hulk fan, you have succeeded in a way no one ever has and possibly no one ever will.  You have done the impossible.  I’m not even going to tell you to see this movie because it’s obvious that I think you should and you should have already at least 7 times and I also told you not to read this until you had.  Avengers: Endgame gets “I love you 3000” out of “SO MANY STAIRS!!”

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The Game (1997)

Discovering the Object of the Game IS the Object of the Game.

Quite some time ago, my friend Fabio gave me a small novel’s worth of review requests.  Thus far I’ve completed few of them, if any.  But I recently decided to endeavor to complete more of my review requests as I had become too lax with them, and Fabio’s name just came up again.  It took me a few weeks to look through the list he presented me with, and I finally selected today’s movie.  I don’t know why he selected it, and I don’t know much about the movie that couldn’t be gathered looking at the front of the DVD, but let’s find out what I thought about The Game, written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, directed by David Fincher, and starring Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, Deborah Kara Unger, James Rebhorn, Peter Donat, Carroll Baker, Anna Katarina, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Charles Martinet, and Mark Boone Junior.

Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is rich, and every bit the dick that can accompany that amount of money.  He’s celebrating his 48^th birthday, though I don’t know if you could call it celebration the way he does it.  Plus, his father was 48 when he committed suicide, so he’s got that goin’ for him.  His estranged brother, Conrad (Sean Penn), contacts him about getting together for lunch, and at lunch he gives him his birthday present: a voucher for a “game” at Consumer Recreation Services (CRS).  Nicholas begrudgingly agrees to call them after Conrad insists that it will change his life.  After a lengthy application process, Van Orton’s game begins.  He finds a wooden clown in his driveway with a key in its mouth, and then the TV tells him that his game is starting, but gives him no more information than that.  Part of the point of the game is to find out the point of the game, after all.

It took me a little while to warm up to this movie, but I did enjoy it when it all came together.  It winds up being pretty thrilling and mysterious, but it gets started pretty slow and uneventful.  Hell, Nicholas’ application process felt like we were watching it in real time, and they filmed HIM complaining about it.  At this point, I could just see them making the trailer for this movie.  THRILL as Michael Douglas fills out paperwork.  DELIGHT as the lead on his pencil breaks!  KILL YOURSELF as he looks at pictures!  But then the game got started and the movie became more of a mystery and a thriller than paperwork.  But I never thought the movie was quite that mysterious.  Once the concept of the game was introduced, I was already instantly suspicious of everyone.  The harder they tried to make me think someone was safe, the less I believed it.  The part with Nicholas’ brother Conrad did surprise me at the end of the movie, and then it surprised me again shortly after, but I didn’t actually like it.  The ending just felt weird and unsatisfying after the build up to it.  It felt like the writer had a great idea for the movie but forgot he had to end it.  But the rest of the movie still had enough thrills to make the movie worth the watch.  I know one thing for sure: I would punch my sister right in her stupid face if she tried to pull this shit on me.  At first it was harmless enough, being just a series of elaborate pranks like hiding a clown in the driveway, changing the lock on a briefcase, ruining a shirt, but when they got into the part  with getting shot at, getting drugged, thinking I killed people, then I’m a little pissed off with this stupid game.  I also don’t know how it would benefit me beyond making my life more interesting than watching movies and writing stuff all day for a couple of days, but he did seem like less of a dick by the end of the movie.

Also (just a random thought) don’t they act like it’s the fall that kills them and not the impact?  So if (HYPOTHETICALLY) someone were to jump off of a roof thinking they were committing suicide, wouldn’t their heart have stopped by the time they hit a safety net?  Hypothetically, of course.  And how would someone figure out exactly which random point on the roof he would jump off in order to set up a safety net?  And how do blanks break a champagne bottle?  Y’know what?  This isn’t the time or place for my random, non-sequitur thoughts.  Let’s move on.

The performances in the movie were all great.  Michael Douglas did a really good job.  He started out all Wall Street and ends up all Falling Down.  I had nearly no problems with his performance.  One problem was that he didn’t punch his brother (and maybe even Deborah Kara Unger) right in their faces.  The other is that he’s supposed to be this high-powered investment banker, but he signs the CRS contract without even reading it?  Deborah Kara Unger did a good job too.  She was pretty difficult to figure out.  I was always suspicious of her, but she seemed to walk the line between trust and not, and I was never sure which way to go.  I was positive how I felt about her around the time she was acting like Douglas got her fired when she spilled a drink all over his expensive suit.  He didn’t get you fired; you deserved to get fired all on your own!  Not only did you spill on him, but you called him an asshole in earshot of the customer and your boss, and he wasn’t even acting that angry.  Most people would flip out much more over much less.  But perhaps that’s just the perspective of someone that’s worked retail for far too long.  Also, I understand her not wanting to get out of the elevator first if she wasn’t wearing underwear, but she doesn’t want to grab his hand to get out because there’s grease on it?  Fine then, bitch!  You stay there with your clean hands.  You can sit and admire how clean they are while waiting for someone to find you, and you can eat your fingers like Werner Herzog in Jack Reacher when you get hungry.  Also, Mark Boone Junior (the Shady Private Investigator) looks a lot like Ariel Castro.  …Just sayin’…

The Game was an interesting movie that ended a little weak, but had enough thrills throughout to keep itself interesting.  The story was decent up until the ending, even if it didn’t make that much sense, and the movie kept me interested even if I never felt it was that mysterious.  And the performances were all pretty great.  I’d say this movie was worth renting at least.  The Game gets “Think of it as a great vacation, except you don’t go to it.  It comes to you” out of “There goes a thousand dollars.”

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Haywire (2012)

I Haven’t Closed My Eyes Since You Were Born

Against my better judgment, I’ve been super interested in seeing today’s movie since I first heard about it.  It’s the screen debut of an MMA fighter that I’m a fan of along with a pretty spectacular supporting cast.  But, even though I felt like I really wanted to see it, something always held me back.  I’m not sure if I was afraid of seeing a movie with this fighter in it because I expected that person to not be able to act or if there was just never a good time to do it.  When I was in Arizona a few months back, I occupied myself by going to the movie theater frequently.  This movie was still in the theater there at the time, but the one or two shows it had did not align with the times I would be able to see it.  The time to see it in theaters had passed, so I set my sights on its RedBox release.  It came out on DVD and at RedBox on the same day, and the first thing I did was put it on reserve.  The time has finally come for my review of Haywire, written by Lem Dobbs, directed by Steven Soderbergh, and starring Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton, Michael Fassbender, Michael Angarano and Anthony Brandon Wong.

Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) is a mercenary of sorts that works for Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), who is also her former boyfriend.  She goes out on a successful mission to rescue a hostage named Jiang (Anthony Brandon Wong) along with another member of the private firm she works for named Aaron (Channing Tatum).  When Mallory returns home, Kenneth asks her to take a quick and easy assignment to pose as the wife of MI6 agent Paul (Michael Fassbender) on a stakeout.  At the party, Mallory sees Paul talking with his contact before entering a barn.  Later, she checks out the barn to find Jiang dead.  Mallory realizes that she’s been set up.  When they return to their hotel room, Paul attacks Mallory.  She whips that ass and kills him.  She then uses his cell phone to find out that Kenneth was the one that told Paul to kill her.  Mallory sets off to find out why she was set up, and make the ones who did it pay.

What a bummer.  I went into this movie with the expectation that Carano would not be able to hold up her end of the acting, but would make for some awesome fight scenes.  What I didn’t expect was that the only real problem I had with this movie would be completely at the fault of the director.  I found myself extremely annoyed with how slow this movie moved.  It was a complete artsy fartsy movie.  You may recall my complaints sounding similar in my review of the Ang Lee Hulk movie.  It seemed to me as if the director was really concerned about getting some interesting and stylized looks and camera angles, and not really concerned with making a movie that was interesting.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind my action movies having a nice artistic style.  But what an action movie needs above all that is pacing.  This movie chose to show boring and uneventful scenes in real time, as if I was watching a boring episode of 24.  During a chase scene on foot, the director uses footage of Carano running down an alley in a straight line for a good 30 seconds.  You can have really long foot chase scenes if you throw in a lot of things to break up the simple running, like jumping over cars or fences.  But when you just show me a lady running in a straight line I get to feeling like I’m watching track and field at the Olympics.  He also shows us about 10 minutes of Carano and Fassbender getting dressed for the party they’re going to and inspecting all their equipment.  I will take your word for it if you tell me these people are pros, so you don’t need to show me them inspecting their equipment.  I will also jump to the conclusion that they got dressed when they show up to the party with clothing on.  Later on, we get a long, drawn out scene of Carano walking down the street occasionally looking over to check that a guy is following her.  This goes on for like 5 minutes before it turns into a pretty boring chase scene.  I got to feeling like the director was doing all of these time wasting and boring things because he finished his movie and realized it was only 40 minutes long.  And, since it would make less money if they just put that version on TV, making it a full hour with commercials, he just decided to hit ‘Undo’ on all of the cuts that he made.

The action, when it happened, was very satisfying to me.  It was like watching an MMA fight, but in a more practical way because it was in a real life setting with no rules and some weapons in the mix.  But I like watching MMA, so I liked watching these fights too.  The fights smashed the hell out of the environments too.  The bulk of them were a little brief for my tastes, though.  The fight between Carano and Fassbender was particularly exciting, lasting for a pretty good stretch of fighting, using and destroying the environment.  The problem with this scene is that it probably would’ve been more impactful to see Fassbender attack Carano out of nowhere had they not spoiled it in every trailer I saw for the movie.

I had no complaints about the performances in this movie.  I would’ve assumed that Gina Carano wouldn’t have been that good of an actress, but I felt like she did good.  Some of the dialogue in the earlier scenes was a little flat, but I was more distracted by the fact that the dialogue was happening in scenes I had no reason to be watching to pay much attention to her performance.  Carano is a solid, good-looking woman, but never really made that much out of her looks in the movie.  She was there to whip ass, and she did.  I found it a little bit jarring at first to see fight scenes between a guy and a girl where neither one was holding back at all, but it would be ill-informed to hold back because Carano was a woman.  She’s a nearly undefeated MMA fighter!  Also, even though it was just made as a snide comment in the movie, I would completely endorse Carano to play Wonder Woman if they make a movie out of that.  It was surprising to me how many huge names they were able to get into this movie to support Carano, but all of the performances were fairly low key and didn’t give me much to talk about.

Haywire had the potential to be a solid action flick, but the director turned it into a stylized bore.  The action was great, but often too short and spread out too far.  The cast was fantastic, and Carano (though not fantastic) did manage to impress me for her first film.  This movie would’ve been fantastic if they had only edited about 40 minutes of boring scenes we didn’t need to see out of it.  As it is, I say you can skip it.  I look forward to seeing Carano in better action movies in the future, though.  Haywire gets “Bummer” out of “You shouldn’t think of her as being a woman.  That would be your first mistake.”

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