Welcome to January, folks – the month when studios tend to dump their dogs into the theatres. If you are not looking to play catch up on the pre-Christmas derby of Oscar hopefuls working their way to a wider release or partaking of the blockbusters deemed too ‘holiday’ for the summer season, you may be on the prowl for one of those buried gems of quality nestled amongst the Hollywood trash heap. Steven Soderbergh makes a solid case for the no-nonsense action thriller, and a bid for a few of your shekels, with Haywire. The film does nothing particularly novel. Another expendable super-spy chase slash revenge picture of which there were at least three of last year – Colombiana, Hanna and Ghost Protocol – and features neither an extravagance for expensive set-pieces nor the over-inflated high stakes. But what then separates this from last year, or a multitude of straight-to-video Jason Statham vehicles is this classic Roger Ebert bon mot, “It’s not what you do but how you do it,” which certainly applies here; even something that feels like this particular filmmaker could do in his sleep has such a precise polish and rhythm that not a second of this film feels superfluous. There are enough little touches and intangables to forgive Haywire for having nothing whatsoever to say other than Soderbergh knows his craft. The film is a walkthrough of all the things that director favours and have been showcased in his prolific c.v. The film knows to be lean and mean and is completely unpretentious about its execution.
(4.5/5)
Lucky is just that: a street hustler. An illegal immigrant from Ghana, he cruises up and down Broadway, sweet talking the ladies and his boys into following him into the back of a nearby store (owned and managed by Lucky’s boss Levon) where they can purchase high quality knock-offs for a fraction of the price of the real thing. It’s a meagre living but Lucky makes enough to dress well, eat and put a roof over his head. He has a girl friend who encourages him to better himself by going to school and overall, he seems to be living a happy life. All of that changes the day Linda, a girl he had a fling with, shows up and thrusts an infant into his arms, explaining that he’s Lucky’s and that he should be a father and take care of the child for two weeks. Lucky doesn’t think the baby (nameless for most of the film) is his (“He’s white! I’m black!”) but unable to call the police and unwilling to abandon the child, he reluctantly tries to make it work.
