Hey everyone. Welcome back to NoFaceNorm’s  Grammatically Unsound Movie Reviews. I hope your respective, non-denominational holidays served you well.

Believe it or not, despite what most critics would like you to think, we’re actually humans, and we actually have emotions. As such, our own biases might make us lean one way or another, and in turn they affect the end result of our reviews. The following critique is a perfect example of this, as – since I was a kid – I have always held a certain preference.

A preference, that is, for tough chicks. Not to be confused with “buff” women.

Please, do yourself a favor and don’t ask.

Naturally, this shoves me straight into the key demographic for a movie like Haywire (2011). Despite its convoluted plot made worse by a narrative half-told in flashbacks, it all takes the backseat to the main selling point: your action heroine stands as a professional in the business of kicking ass.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Uh, you gave Colombiana a bad review, genius. You must be some kind of moron.”

But that is exactly my point. The whole “femme fatale” thing is a gimmick that’s been done to death. Every now and then, we see a new spin on it, as in the case of The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, Hanna or Kill Bill, but usually it’s all the same formula that just shouts: “Hey, stupid, give us your money.”

You could summarize it like this:

Action + Hot Lady = $

It doesn’t really get any more complicated than that. Unfortunately, what we’ve learned from films like Colombiana or Salt (Starring Angelina Jolie) is that this formula is starting to become a tiny bit transparent.

When you cast a suitably attractive woman as your “token contract murderer” it looks particularly awkward when she hyperextends her knees to kick, stiffens up her shoulders to punch, and turns her palms inward when she puts up her dukes (seriously, they always do that). It looks a little incongruent when your government-sanctioned killing machine seems to be so wary of breaking her nails. Seasoned fighter or not, you subconsciously pick up on these things.

So, in the end, these women aren’t tough. They’re just doing a bad job of acting tough. To quote Socrates, “Just because you put syrup on shit, doesn’t make it pancakes.”

Despite the whole “Now I will kill you” part, this really doesn’t seem so bad.

But here comes a new spin on an old formula:

Movie Exec 1: “What if we took an actual fighter, and taught her how to act?”

Movie Exec 2: “Fighters don’t make good actors, we’ve done it before.”

Movie Exec 1: “But, she’ll play a contractor – she doesn’t have to act! Her character lives sans emotions!”

Movie Exec 2:  “Erm, but wouldn’t that take a subtle sense of complexity – the kind that can only be expressed and known through experience?”

Movie Exec 1: “No.”

Movie Exec 2: “Rick, I like your style.”

And that’s pretty much it. That’s what makes this Haywire (2011) feel so authentic. Instead of trying to get some “normie” to play a martial artist, they get a martial artist to play a martial artist! It’s F’ing genius!

Read about the verdict after the jump…

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

3.5 out of 5 stars

Year Released:

20 January 2012

Director:

Steven Soderbergh

Cast/Crew

Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Eddie J. Fernandez, Aaron Cohen, Maximino Arciniega, and Michael Fassbender

Genre

Action, Thriller

Official URL:

Haywire (2011)

Credit: Relativity Media

Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire gets its theatrical release next Friday, January 20th, but the first five minutes of the action/thriller can be seen online and here, on Yell! Magazine.

The scene introduces us to Mallory (MMA great, Gina Carano) and Aaron (Channing Tatum) as they meet up in a diner. After some awkward dialog, Aaron attacks Mallory and proceeds to kick the shit out of her. When a poor, unsuspecting bystander intervenes (because no man should beat on a woman), Mallory has an opportunity to turn the tide of the fight — and she takes it. If only Aaron had tapped out.

While Haywire co-stars such Hollywood heavyweights as Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, and Bill Paxton (OK, so they might not be heavyweights), it’s a genre flick with appropriately awful acting (if these five minutes are any indication). Still, it’s bound to be a fun-filled action ride that’s enjoyable from start to finish.

Check back next week for Yell! Magazine’s full review of Haywire.

Enjoy the clip and…

Rock Hard!

Gina Carano in Haywire (2012) Picture

Gina Carano has been out of the MMA spotlight for quite some time now, ever since her first career loss to Cris Cyborg in STRIKEFORCE on August 15, 2009. It’s been a long two and half years, and her first major deal with Hollywood will finally be revealed this month in the highly anticpiated action/thriller Haywire.

Brought to you by the award-winning director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, Contagion), the opportunity was given to Gina over a four-hour lunch. For Soderbergh, it was her fighting abilities that gave her the lock as the lead alpha female role. Haywire also stars Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, and Antonio Banderas.

Ewan McGregor in Haywire (2012) picture

Since her defeat, Carano explained in an recent interview that she used it to focus on her movie, which has her performing 98% of the stunts for the lead charater, Mallory Kane, to spend time with family, and to work out some personal issues she has been facing. It would be no surprise to know that the fight against Cris Cyborg possibly had more impact on her than anyone could have imagine, since her dream is to be recognized as the best female MMA fighter in the world, and that dream was shattered in a single night by Cyborg. Carano also expressed how much more she wants to learn about acting, and is convinced that making movies is something you can do in the long-term. With that said, Carano continues to keep it a secret to whether or not she will return to fighting in STRIKEFORCE, but hinted that after Janurary 20th an answer will certainty be revealed.

Gina Carano in STRIKEFORCE

As much as we want to see Gina Carano back inside the cage, rather than focus on film, we just can’t see her doing both, especially if she wants to be the best female MMA fighter. Managing two intense careers would be challenging even for a highly successful female role-model like Carano, who doesn’t believe she is the most organized person in the world. Plus the two female divisions in STRIKEFORCE is stronger than ever with the best female fighters like Miesha Tate, Ronda Rousey, and Sarah Kaufman to name a few. Jumping in on the roster now would definitely be a new challenge for Gina to face, but anything is possible for Carano. She’s capable of quickly moving up the ranks again, and fulfilling her dream to become a champion one day.

Gina Carano’s next film

Gina Carano is rumored to star as “Circle” in another Hollywood film called Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters, directed by Thor Freudenthal. This would see her starring alongside Logan Lerman and Alexandra Daddario. The film is already in pre-production, and is scheduled to be released sometime in 2013.

Time will only tell now, and we will all have to see how well Haywire performs at the box office, and how critics will rate her movie. In the meantime, keep your eyes out on Gina Carano, and check back soon, here at Yell! Magazine, to read the review on Haywire.

BONUS: Remembering Gina Carano In MMA

Mallory Kane is a highly trained operative who works for a government security contractor in the dirtiest, most dangerous corners of the world. After successfully freeing a Chinese journalist held hostage, she is double crossed and left for dead by someone close to her in her own agency. Suddenly the target of skilled assassins who know her every move, Mallory must find the truth in order to stay alive.

Using her black-ops military training, she devises an ingenious—and dangerous—trap. But when things go haywire, Mallory realizes she’ll be killed in the blink of an eye unless she finds a way to turn the tables on her ruthless adversary.

Haywire (2011) Trailer

Source: Haywire

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Contagion is the type of movie that might rub quite a few people the wrong way just because of the manner in which it shamelessly bares its premise. It’s the type of film that may as well have been conjured up by the masterminds down at the hand-sanitizer factory, because their latest sales plan involving a certain… illness (involving hogs) has finally managed to die down. It aims straight for our tendency to panic ourselves into a stupor and trample over one another like Wal-Mart shoppers during the Holiday Season.

It’s an easy sell, and it’ll sell even more “top 10 ways not to bring home diseases from school” articles to the local papers. People will see it, and afterward they’ll likely tell you not to touch your face every time you unconsciously brush your nose. Then they’ll stroke their chin as they soak in some juicy self-satisfaction.

Obvious pandering aside, Contagion remains a slick, well-paced action-thriller that tells the more subjective and humane side of a world-wide pandemic that amounts to what is basically a zombie movie, sans the zombies. The dying walk the Earth and risk contaminating those who’ve already struggled enough to live another day. One wayward sneeze, one cramped elevator, one indirect kiss and like magic, you’ve become part of an already unsolvable problem.

It begins with a business trip taken by Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) and we see her weave through a slew of sharp-suited businessmen in a swanky, upscale bar in Hong Kong. In the first of several shots that seem to satirize themselves later on, we’re given glimpses of dastardly bowls of beer nuts and the corrupt façade put forth by a seemingly innocent elevator button. As this unleaded paranoia fuel sets in, we’re given back-and-forth flashes of several other apparently infected characters as they go about their day, and die.

As Beth transports the deadly virus back home to Minneapolis and decides to have a quiet night with her husband Mitch (Matt Damon), she too succumbs to her illness and quickly ends up dead. (It’s not a spoiler if it takes place in the first 10 minutes of the movie.) Like clockwork, Mitch’s stepson bites it too, and soon he’s left as the film’s everyman who must protect the last shred of his family from a world about to go bonkers.

As people begin dropping like flies, Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sends forth Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) — an epidemic Intelligence Service Officer — into the fray and she quickly becomes the one character who can basically be called the “hero” of this tangled web of subplots. As she labors over finding a cemented set of symptoms to the virus, Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) of the Department of Homeland Security is sent on a trip to Hong Kong to gain more information and winds up in a fine mess to call her own. Evil-Man-From-The-Internet, Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) makes a living as a muckraking blogger who’s hell-bent on proving the conspiracy that the government is in bed with pharmaceutical companies, and they’re out to make a pretty penny off the panic-stricken public in need of a good vaccination.

Poor Marion Cotillard's subplot doesn’t even go anywhere.

Hitchcock once mentioned that a thriller is only as strong as its main antagonist, and this rings ever true when your villain has taken the form of an invisible cloud of bacteria and the mass hysteria of a population with nowhere to turn. As subplots interweave, the one true story we follow is that of the virus, dubbed MEV-1, as it goes from a curious viral outbreak that claims a few lives to a full-on eradicator of worlds that causes the halt of modern civilization.

And despite its international flavor and terse but almost unnoticeable soundtrack, Contagion tells a very compassionate tale by raising some important questions. Consider the following: You work for the CDC and your wife is in a town that’s about to be quarantined, which will probably result in a superabundance of gangbangers prowling the streets, punctuated by the odd costumed vigilante. Do you calmly tell her to get out while she still can, thus taking advantage of your position, or do you be a professional-man-in-a-suit and collect your paycheck as the gangbangers get to bangin’? Hmm, what’s that? You say you’ll tell her to make like a tree and GTFO?

Alright, Sherlock, riddle me this: What with her innate, yet skewed sense of empathy, she’ll probably let her friends know about the how everyone’s going to be shut-off from everything, and BAM — widespread panic and a solid tea-bagging from the higher-ups who very clearly asserted that you not let any annoying emotions get the best of you. Now you’re down on your luck and addicted to drugs. Or something. Take this type of idea and mix it in a big jug with what other moral complications you can think of and you’ve got yourself one hell of a lesson in ethics that will leave you with an undeniable fear of doorknobs.

"I am Jude Law. I come from the Internet."

Which isn’t necessarily an exaggeration, because Contagion is the type of movie that works best in theaters because it shocks you into an awkward sort of self-consciousness. Suddenly, you’re alarmingly aware of the fact that you’re the umpteenth person sitting in your current seat parked in front of the big screen, sharing an enclosed room with a hundred or so people all in the same situation.

As you shove fistfuls of buttery, decadent popcorn into your mouth, you ponder back to every surface you’ve managed to touch in between the last time you washed your hands and this very moment.

If you had to take the bus, then God have mercy on your soul. A man to your left coughs, and you strain yourself, trying your best not to void your bowels.

The woman to your right clears her throat, and you see someone in the front row dash for the fire exit.

In one liminal moment, the popcorn that you share with your date becomes a hell of a lot more unappealing, as does the idea of leaving the house in general.

And like magic, film criticism jumps straight up to the rank above deep sea welding in the list of “worlds most dangerous jobs” — a thrilling venture, but a little too hazardous.

Matt Damon.

I wouldn’t necessarily call it an action thriller, but more of a drama thriller. Don’t let the flaccid appellation “drama” put you off, because Contagion hits hardest in its quiet moments. You’ll definitely be thrilled, and you’ll definitely wash your hands. Questions will bubble up in your head bones as the choices the characters make lead you into subconscious self-reflection. “What would I do if grandpa got infected? Push him down the stairs? Stay with him and risk infection to make his last moments fulfilling? Meh, probably not.

And what about the high rise in crime? Would I protect the weak, or join in on the looting and pillaging? A guy’s gotta eat after all… Maybe I’ll go to the pet shop and eat the hamsters.” Depending on your inclinations, this may lead you to questioning a few of the loose ends that failed to be tied up in the third act, but it’s not nearly enough to detract from the whole experience. By the closing credits, you could hear a pin drop in the theater on opening night.

The Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars

Is a movie that advocates  personal hygiene really all that bad? Not exactly. Unwarranted panic attacks — yes — but a healthy dose of caution — no. If you don’t look at it as the soapbox for writer Scott Z. Burns, Contagion is undeniably one of the better films out this season, and is definitely worth the watch. You’ll have a strange urge to shoot up with some disinfectant after a screening, and you may freak out the next time your son blows out the candles on his birthday cake — but don’t worry, these odd compulsions will pass with time.

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

4 out of 5 stars

Year Released:

9 September 2011

Director:

Steven Soderbergh

Cast/Crew

Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tien You Chui, Josie Ho, Monique Gabriela Curnen, Griffin Kane, Laurence Fishburne, John Hawkes, Jude Law

Genre

Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Official URL:

Contagion (2011)