Fifteen years after Haywire arrived, its fight scenes are still the first thing fans talk about. The reason starts with the lead: Gina Carano was a mixed martial arts fighter before she stepped into the role, and in the film she performs her own stunts as a black ops agent who is betrayed by her employers and targeted for assassination.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh from a script by Lem Dobbs, the film was announced in September 2009 with the title Knockout, later changed to Haywire. It also stars Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas.
A real MMA fighter led the action
Haywire is a 2011 action thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Lem Dobbs. The film stars Gina Carano as a black ops agent who is betrayed by her employers and targeted for assassination in a conspiracy she is forced to unravel. Carano, a mixed martial arts fighter, performs her own stunts in the film.
Six weeks with a Duvdevan officer
In preparation for her role, Gina Carano underwent a six-week intensive tactical training course with former Duvdevan Unit officer Aaron Cohen, who has a cameo appearance in the finished film. She spent three hours a day in stunts and three hours a day with Cohen.
Surveillance training tracked her car
During a particularly harrowing two-week period when Cohen was teaching Carano the art of surveillance and counter-surveillance, he and his team tracked her via a GPS system installed in her car.
Lengthy, realistic fights were the goal
Soderbergh reportedly clashed with Lionsgate over the film’s direction. Lionsgate wanted a more action-centric film in the vein of the Bourne series, while Soderbergh had intended a spy thriller interspersed with lengthy, realistic fight scenes.
The clash delayed the film by a year
Haywire was originally set to be released in late 2010, but re-shoots and a change in distributor from Lionsgate to Relativity Media delayed it for more than a year. During the intervening period, Soderbergh filmed and edited Contagion, which was ultimately released over a month in advance.
Re-shoots returned to Soderbergh’s cut
Following the change in distributor, Soderbergh’s re-shoots and re-edits focused on reshaping the film to be more in line with his original vision. His original vision included the lengthy, realistic fight scenes he had intended.
Critics saw Carano as her own stuntwoman
Andrew O’Hehir of Salon.com called Haywire “a lean, clean production, shot and edited by Soderbergh himself and utterly free of the incoherent action sequences and overcooked special effects that plague similarly scaled Hollywood pictures.” Richard Corliss of Time wrote that “Carano is her own best stuntwoman, but in the dialogue scenes she’s all kick and no charisma.”
Rotten Tomatoes’ critical consensus, based on 199 reviews, said the first-time actress displayed ample action-movie chops in a fast-paced thriller with a top-notch cast and outstanding direction from Steven Soderbergh.
What’s the Haywire detail you still think about: the six-week tactical course, the GPS tracking, or Corliss’s verdict on Carano’s stunt work?
Facts from Wikipedia: Haywire (2011 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Film images from TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.