Haywire (2011)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Featurette-Men of Haywire Trailer-x 3 - for other films
Rating
Year Of Production	2011
Running Time	88:54
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Steven Soderbergh
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Gina Carano Michael Angarano Channing Tatum Debby Lynn Ross Michael Douglas Antonio Banderas Ewan McGregor
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	David Holmes

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (256Kb/s) English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 (256Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) works for a shadowy black ops private company run by Kenneth (Ewan McGregor). When the company is hired for a job by government figure Coblenz (Michael Douglas), Mallory and a team including Aaron (Channing Tatum) are sent to Barcelona where they successfully rescue a dissident journalist being held hostage and hand him over to Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas). Mallory had been in a relationship with Kenneth, but now she is tired both of him and his company and seeks to quit. However against her better judgment she is persuaded by Kenneth to undertake one last assignment in Dublin with British operative Paul (Michael Fassbender). But the operation is not what it seems: Mallory finds the dissident she had rescued in Barcelona shot dead and is attacked by Paul. On the run Mallory has to escape her pursuers, try to work out why she has been targeted and decide just who to trust.

     TrevorD reviewed the Blu-ray of Haywire on this site here. Trevor noted that it can be difficult to identify a Steven Soderbergh film by genre, such is the eclectic nature of his output, from small independent films to mainstream. This is certainly true, although Soderbergh’s films do often have a similar style and Haywire, a full on Bourne type espionage thriller, is not dissimilar in style to Out of Sight, his 1998 crime / action film starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, that is a totally hip and sexy film, and one I enjoyed a lot. Both films feature strong female roles, a jumbled chronology where the plot is slowly revealed, use of colour to code various locations and a score by David Holmes that is instantly recognisable as belonging to the same family.

     Thus Haywire starts part way through the plot when we meet Mallory waiting in a diner in upstate New York and the details of the Barcelona and Dublin operations are revealed in flashback. The scenes in the US are shot with a blue filter, not inappropriate given the snowy landscape, while the Barcelona sequences have a definite brown look. Other sequences have a yellow look (Washington and Mexico) while the Dublin ones are more natural, with a touch of grey. As the lead, Carano is very attractive and looks good in a dress but is one tough woman. For an action film her acting is acceptable but, unlike other action films with a female lead such as Colombiana (2011), that have their female in revealing clothing at times, Haywire allows Carano to wear sensible gear and to show off her obvious fighting abilities. This is one woman who is very believable taking out the men with punches and kicks, and not a little Muay Thai, and her skills allows the camera to get in close during the frenetic action sequences. The men in Haywire play supporting roles although one must say that Soderbergh has gathered an amazing group of men including Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton and Channing Tatum; truly a supporting cast any action lead would savour.

     Haywire is a thinking person’s thriller with excellent action sequences. It is a tense espionage thriller that features a tough female lead who can fight, a jumbled chronology where the plot is slowly revealed, the use of colour to code various locations and an impressive score by David Holmes. Haywire is well worth a look.

Video

     Haywire was shot on the RED digital camera, is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the original theatrical ratio, and is 16x9 enhanced.

     Soderbergh uses natural light and, as noted, he does play with the colour scheme. A lot of the film, especially the action sequences, is shot hand held. The result is a jumpy print that varies in sharpness and contrast, especially when the light source is behind the actors. Shadow detail is sometimes a bit indistinct. However, this is the way the film was shot, not the authoring of the DVD. Indoor scenes and close-ups are sharp and detailed. There is a bit of ghosting with movement, especially against vertical lines in the background, but otherwise no artefacts were apparent.

     There are English subtitles for the hearing impaired, and also white subtitles which occur automatically to translate the few lines of Spanish.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     Audio is a choice of English Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448 Kbps, English Dolby Digital 2.0 at 256 Kbps plus an English descriptive audio at 256 Kbps for the vision impaired.

     The audio track is good. Dialogue is mostly easy to hear and understand, except some of Tatum’s lines. The surrounds are effective but not overdone. They provide ambient sound, such as ocean waves, vehicles and people, plus music and give a nice enveloping feel in the chase and action sequences with bumps and crashes. The sub-woofer added a little bass to action and music.

    Lip synchronisation was fine.

     The original score by David Holmes provides effective support to the visuals.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

     On start-up the following trailers play and need to be skipped: Lockout (1:29), The Cabin in the Woods (2:14) and Chernobyl Diaries (2:24). They cannot be selected from the extras menu.

Men of Haywire (5:15)

     An EPK with interview snippets with Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum and Antonio Banderas plus some film and on set footage.

     The US Region 1 release of Haywire is basically similar to ours but includes Spanish subtitles plus the second featurette “Gina Carano in Training” (16 minutes approx.) that was available on our Blu-ray release, but not this DVD. Trevor in his review thought it was worthwhile so on that basis the Region 1 release wins.

     Haywire is a tense espionage thriller that features a tough female lead, a jumbled chronology, the use of colour to code various locations and an impressive score. Haywire is a thinking person’s thriller, and well worth a look.

     The audio is good, the video as Steven Soderbergh intended. Extras are limited to one short piece.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall