On the couch

Haywire ****
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas

Midnight in Paris ****
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard

I’m going to write a book some day about the history of on-screen fighting.
It’s going to be called ‘Things That Make You Go OOF!’ and its central thesis will be that there are three types of fights in films: really, really bad ones where you can see the punches aren’t landing (see: Rocky); great ones where you know nobody could do what the performers are doing but it still looks super cool (see: The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and the final group, the fights where time has been taken to make things seem real and whenever someone gets thumped you can’t help but blurt out an “oof” in an act of knee-jerk sympathy.
Haywire is a fine candidate for the third kind of film – it’s a spy flick with fantastic fights and a unique selling point – the star of the show, Gina Carano, can do everything her character does on screen… and more.
The story itself is simple enough. Carano plays Mallory Kane, a private security contractor whose business associates decide she should take early retirement. One murder attempt later (aren’t a clock and a pension plan more traditional?) Ms Kane is on the run from the gardaí (a chunk of the action takes place in Dublin), the CIA and some other unsavoury types and is hungry for revenge.
The story is enlivened a bit by a sub-plot involving a kidnapped Chinese journalist, Antonio Banderas as a mysterious “fixer” type and Antonio Banderas’ beard which is so impressively bushy that it deserves a mention all of its own. It’s just intricate enough to make the bits inbetween the action scenes interesting but not so complicated that you need to rewind constantly or take notes to keep up.
Despite lining out alongside the likes of Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas and Channing Tatum, the star of Haywire is Carano. She defies her total lack of acting experience by embodying the role of a tough, physically capable woman better than any other actress out there due to the simple fact that she is the real deal.
For anyone unfamiliar with her background, Carano first came to Stephen Soderbergh’s attention when the director saw her fighting on television. At the time Gina “Conviction” Carano, a former Thai kickboxing champion, was a world champion in women’s mixed martial arts. In light of the popularity of the Bourne movies and the rebooted, more realistic Bond films, it made sense to the director that anyone combining movie star good looks, obvious charisma and the athletic ability to dominate in MMA needed to be put on screen.
The results are obvious in the way the film’s fights are shot. Instead of the normal choppy editing style necessary to allow, shall we say, less physically gifted performers work their way through the choreography, Soderbergh makes use of one of the film’s greatest assets and allows all hell to break lose in long, unbroken chunks.
Though it’s somewhat perfunctory ending is a bit disappointing, Haywire is still a fantastic slice of action nonsense. Get the popcorn and prepare to flinch.
From the hyper-real to the wonderfully fantastic, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is about as whimsical and charming as a film can get without starring a singing puppy made out of candy floss.
Owen Wilson stars as Gil Pender, a Hollywood script writer going through a bit of an early mid-life crisis. Wrapped up in worrying if he make the move from schlocky but successful screenplays to respected novelist he takes a pre-wedding hollier to Paris with his fiancé and her parents he finds himself captivated by the City of Lights.
While his missus to be, Inez (Rachel McAdams), seems to want to spend all her time with her intolerable, know-it-all mate Paul (Martin Sheen) doing touristy stuff and the parents-in-law to be are content to faintly disapprove of him while not enjoying France, Gil wants to just wander about the place and let the atmosphere get his creative juices flowing.
His wandering leads him to travel back in time to city’s 1920s where meets his heroes – Hemmingway, Stein and Fitzgerald amongst others – and falls in love with Picasso’s lover Adriana (Marion Cotillard).
As with all Allen’s work, the dialogue is snappy and funny. The mechanics of time travel are never dwelt on or dealt with, the film instead focusing on whether Gil should grow up and get married or continue to (literally) live in the past with his new squeeze.
Great acting, plently to chuckle at and a sense of film fun you just don’t get that much anymore, this is perfect for a lazy Sunday.