It’s always nice to see a movie set in your hometown, here part of Haywire was filmed in Dublin so getting to see a preview was going to be a treat.
As far as I can remember the only other time I’ve seen a film on opening night where it was set was Madonna’s The Next Best Thing, which was set in Santa Monica. The locals giggled as local bars and clubs came onscreen. In the Savoy for the preview of Haywire, similar happened but squeals of ‘Ooh Burger King’ didn’t seem as exotic.
Haywire is directed by Steven Soderbergh, yes he of Ocean’s Eleven fame and with a cast that includes, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas and of course, Gina Carano, you would expect a decent script to start with.
Unfortunately that’s not what we get. Gina Carano plays a Black Ops soldier type, who is sent on a mission firstly to Barcelona and then on to Dublin. By the time she gets to Dublin, we know that her bosses had turned on her and want her out of the picture. Enter Michael Fassbender who is to be Mallory’s (Carano) fella Paul for a couple of days and to do the deed of getting rid of her. He fails.
She makes a run for it from the good ole Shelbourne Hotel, down Nassau Street through the Automobile place on Joshua Lane (yes, I do know the name, I thought it would be cool as a band name) to Burger King on Grafton Street. As a local, seeing these places on the big screen is kinda cool but the direction and the script seems all too familiar as Gina Carano’s character is forcefully squeezed into a female Jason Bourne. We’ve even seen the rooftop drama in the Bourne series too. I’m gone past the “ooh she can kick, ooh she can punch, ooh she’s a girl’ thing. I’d like a decent storyline please.
There’s also one thing I have to say about this particular screening. Some scenes about 15/20 minutes in were extremely blurry, so much so that I took off my specs and cleaned them. I’m not sure if this was a Directoral problem, editing problem or a projectionist problem but it was a little eye boggling.
Good things about the film, Gina Carano is slightly fit and the story is told to Scott (Michael Angarano) inbetween some awesome driving, as he and Mallory try to evade capture by the Canadian Police Force. As Carrano also wears a Trinity College sweatshirt, expect ‘Trinity Girls Kick Ass’ copies.
(My apologies, this should have been posted last week and yes, I am from Meath originally but Dublin is home.)