Haywire

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.

About The Production

With his latest thriller, Haywire, Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh once again tackles a popular movie genre, adding elements that subtly turn the audience’s expectations on their heads. Combining intrigue and suspense, complex characters and glamorous international settings with bone-crunching action, real-world special ops techniques and a charismatic female hero, the director has reinvented the espionage thriller.

“I am a fan of the early James Bond films,” says Soderbergh. “From Russia With Love may be my favorite. In those movies, you get to know who the characters are instead of just what they do. In more recent espionage-action films, there isn’t a lot of time spent developing the supporting characters. I wanted to revisit the early Bond films. Their ratio of story to action is very much like ours.”

Soderbergh’s longtime filmmaking partner, producer Gregory Jacobs, knew that the director had been interested in exploring the genre for some time. “The idea had a lot of appeal for him,” says Jacobs. “He had always wanted to make a true action movie. We’d been thinking about it for a while when we contacted Lem Dobbs, who had written two films, The Limey and Kafka, for us in the past.”

The resulting script is less a tribute to previous films than a complete reworking with a unique twist typical of Soderbergh. “I always wondered why the main character in these films had to be a guy,” he says. “I find there’s an added level of drama and conflict whenever you have a female protagonist. There’s always the additional layer of operating in a world run by men. It’s another wall that they have to go through. In addition to this being a story about espionage and covert operatives, it’s also about the relationships our lead character has with the various male characters and how she functions in a male-dominated world.”

Soderbergh points out that there is nothing overtly feminist in the script. “It’s rarely brought up that Mallory Kane is a woman. It’s just a fact, and people make assumptions about her that turn out not to be true.”

The director likes to describe the film as a Pam Grier movie made by Alfred Hitchcock. Character development was particularly important to him as he worked with Dobbs to flesh out Kane, a black-ops specialist working for a private security contractor. “I wanted to layer the character a little bit,” he says. “For example, there’s a scene in which she sucks out the contents of her partner’s phone while he’s out of the room. At that point, it is unprovoked. He hasn’t done anything to make her suspicious, but I felt that it was something the character would do.

“It adds a layer of guilt,” he continues. “And I think the reason Hitchcock movies are still watchable is not just because of his technique, but because, at their core, they are all about guilt. There is always somebody at the center of the movie that has something they don’t want known. I wanted to have some of that so she wasn’t just a ‘goody-goody’ the whole way through. As it turns out, that decision probably saved her life. But when she does it, you’re wondering why.”

Soderbergh found his muse for this film in an unexpected venue. He had seen mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano fight, and became intrigued by the idea of featuring her in a movie. A thrilling and demanding combination of fighting styles including Muay Thai, Karate, Jiu Jitsu, Judo, wrestling, boxing, Sambo, kickboxing and Kung Fu, mixed martial arts gave Carano the ability to perform the kind of deadly hand-to-hand combat the director envisioned for his film.

“I knew there had to be a woman other than Angelina Jolie who could run around with a gun,” he says. “After I saw a couple of Gina’s fights, I viewed some interviews with her that showed her as a really genuine, very grounded person. It occurred to me that I could combine my desire to make a realistic espionage film with her expertise. But first I had to meet with her and see whether or not it would appeal to her.”

After an initial meeting, the filmmakers began to tailor the part of Mallory Kane for Carano. “We knew she’d be able do most of her own stunts,” says Jacobs. “That was key, because Steven was adamant about not wanting to do a lot of wire work. He didn’t want the audience to feel the action elements were so acrobatic or dangerous that a human couldn’t possibly be doing them. The wonderful thing about filming with Gina was that there were no special effects in the fights. Everything was real.”

That fact was critical to Soderbergh’s vision of the film as a realistic adventure, which also meant he eschewed the kind of futuristic technology that is a staple of many films in the genre. “In many ways, we wanted to go against the grain of the way action is usually shot,” he says. “I really wanted to take advantage of the fact that we had people who really could perform these actions and not be indulging in the kind of trickery that is sometimes necessary in a movie. I didn’t want anybody doing anything that wasn’t physically possible. And I didn’t want to rely on technology that didn’t exist.”

“If two people are in a room fighting, it has to end at a certain point because you’ll run out of things that are plausible,” he says. “This was my take on that kind of movie. Haywire is more of a drama with action in it than it is a wall-to-wall action movie.”

Transforming A Real-Life Fighter

To prepare for the role of Mallory Kane, Gina Carano underwent intensive training, starting with an in-depth special ops tutorial with the film’s technical advisor and real-life security expert, Aaron Cohen. Cohen, who spent three years in Israel’s special operations undercover unit, is the founder of IMS Security, a consulting firm that specializes in providing tactical counter-terrorist training. He helped the filmmakers and cast understand the realities of undercover operations.

“I felt that training with Aaron Cohen would provide Gina with a solid foundation of confidence,” says Soderbergh. “If she felt that the physical demands were doable, that would go a long way toward making her feel comfortable with the performance. I chose Aaron because I wanted someone who was familiar with that world as it is today and not somebody who did it 10 or 20 years ago. He became part of the brain trust for this film, vetting virtually everything we did.”

Cohen’s participation in the film was crucial from the get-go, as he sat in on script meetings between Soderbergh, Jacobs and Dobbs. From small story points to wardrobe decisions, Cohen provided the filmmakers with checks and balances every step of the way. “I could ask how a conversation would go if you were trying to convey a piece of information but can’t come out and say it,” says the director. “He was on the set all the time and I would email him at all hours of the day or night. His input was invaluable, down to details like where you might hide your gun.”

According to Cohen, the film captures the true nature of special ops. “Everything from the dialogue to the nature of the operations is authentic. In one case, an operation is botched and that is real. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in the world of special operations and they do.”

Under Cohen’s direction, a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in downtown Los Angeles was transformed into a staging ground for special operations training. Three dozen portable walls reconfigured the wide-open space to replicate the film’s diverse settings. “He put me through two months of boot camp in that warehouse,” Carano says. “He had me doing sprints, entering and exiting make-believe apartments—everything Mallory does in the film.”

For 30 hours a week, Carano was immersed in special operations training. “Aaron’s goal was to prepare me both mentally and physically for this movie,” she says. “I read his book, but nothing could have prepared me for the boot camp. He taught me everything from the basics of guns to his life experiences. One of the things he impressed on me was that as a special operative, you’re commissioned to take on the jobs that the government doesn’t want to have its fingerprints on. If you’re caught or imprisoned, you’re on your own. The process was extreme and amazing. I come from fighting in a cage, which is very organized. He helped me develop the mindset I needed for Mallory, which is cutthroat to the extreme. It’s life or death.”

Even with her years of mixed martial arts training, Carano was pushed to the edge during her preparation for Haywire. “Gina has a warrior mentality,” Cohen says. “We were really tough on her because we knew we could be. I wanted her to go beyond her comfort zone. It was important to immerse her in the mindset of a Special Forces operative. As a fighter, she’s working alone. In special operations, missions are only successfully accomplished with teamwork.”

To help develop that sense of camaraderie, Jacobs arranged for castmates Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Julian Alcaraz and Max Arciniega to join Carano’s training for limited periods of time. “I felt it was important to bring everybody together so they understood the amount of cooperation involved in order to be successful,” says the producer. “I wanted the training to be as real as the story consulting.”

Channing Tatum spent four grueling days of training with Cohen. “The day I arrived at the warehouse, I had no idea what I was getting into,” he says. “I don’t even think Aaron said hi to me and for the next four days and I didn’t really say anything. I just did exactly as I was told.

“We learned all the tactical movements,” the actor continues. “He showed us how to take a room and look as if we’d done it for years and years. He just beat it into us.”

Tatum’s previous fight training gave him an advantage, according to Cohen. “He has great hand-eye coordination, tremendous balance and is very strong. He also had had some excellent training on some of the other films he’s appeared in. I helped him clean up his pistol work for the hostage rescue scene. We worked with him and Gina on some of the things that can go wrong in an operation that haven’t been seen before on film. Weapons do malfunction in the middle of a shootout, they jam or are empty or they weren’t oiled properly. You have to be able to not only fire the weapon, but manipulate it through all types of problems.”

Cohen’s tutoring paid off in Barcelona when Tatum’s weapon malfunctioned during a take. He cleared it and used it without anyone being the wiser. “When that malfunction occurred,” recalls Cohen, “Channing looked at me, gave me a thumbs up and we moved on to the next shot.”

Carano’s impressive mixed martial arts experience with its emphasis on hand-to-hand combat did not prepare her for the wide range of weaponry used in the film but Cohen did. “I spent a lot of time developing Gina’s primary weapon skills,” he says. “We trained her in various forms of sub-machine guns and assault rifles, using real weapons that had been converted into blank-firing weapons. She also worked with pistols, including the Glock 179mm, Sig Sauer 9mm, the Uzi and micro-Uzi, as well as a Commando assault rifle. “The training was comprehensive and very physical,” he adds. “Her background gave her a huge advantage in terms of the motor skills needed for handling weapons. She was able to move very quickly and effectively while carrying out complex maneuvers.”

Along with the special ops training, Carano worked closely with the film’s fight choreographer, J.J. Perry and stunt coordinator R.A. Rondell. Ordinarily the stunt coordinator’s job is to teach an actor how to engage in a knockdown drag-out fight without getting hurt. But for Haywire, it was more important for the coordinator to teach the star how to not hurt someone else during the fight scenes.

Her natural athleticism came in handy, says Rondell. “You can teach an athlete to do anything. She came in with a heavy fighting background and she also has a unique discipline. I approached everything I taught her working off her disciplines as a fighter. We had to teach her not to actually hit someone. We had to reprogram her to pull her punches slightly and to react realistically to being movie punched. She actually sat a few people down initially. But in the end, she was as good as any stunt person in the fight scenes.”

During her training at Los Angeles’ Fight Gym 8711, Carano learned to admire the stunt people she saw working around her. “They are amazing athletes,” she says. “All I could do was jump in. I already knew how to punch and kick, but stunt fighting is a completely different art. Since they knew my style is Muay Tai and boxing and Jiu-Jitsu, they incorporated all of that into the fighting scenes. I had my input and they were very receptive to it, which made for some very beautiful fight sequences.”

The audience first experiences Mallory’s physical prowess in a shocking fight between her and Aaron, played by Channing Tatum. Although they are on the same side in the Barcelona affair, they also find themselves going head to head. “Channing is very athletic and really strong,” says Carano. “He’s so passionate about what he’s doing and I was glad to be able to steal some of that passion from him. After the first 15 minutes, I was exhausted. It’s a very brutal scene. But we took care of each other and no one got hurt. But we were extremely aggressive, throwing each other into all sorts of glass mirrors, and walls and flipping one another over tables and getting kicked onto counter tops.”

Recalls Tatum of the experience, “It’s strange because you’re swinging as hard as you can and missing each other by the smallest margin. It’s a little nerve-wracking but it’s also like dancing. It can be very fluid and beautiful. And when you have someone like Gina who really knows her body so well and has such great control, it just synchs.”

Soderbergh says there was one tense moment, despite all the precautions and training. “In the fight in the hotel room, she’s supposed to hit Michael Fassbender with a vase. They’d been rehearsing this for weeks. J.J. and R.A. told Michael over and over again that when she reaches for the vase, his inclination would be to look at it. Don’t do it, they told him, because if you do, she’ll hit you in the eye. Sure enough, on the day, she reaches for the vase, he looks at it and she clocks him right in the eye. It’s in the movie—which is the good news. All he could do was laugh and admit that he just couldn’t help himself.”

The fight scenes were only the beginning of the stunt training Carano needed to be comfortable with in order to become special operative Mallory Kane. “It’s part of my job to find out what people are good at, what they’re bad at and what their fears are,” says Rondell. “Gina, as it turns out, has a fear of heights and one of the key scenes in the film has her running across rooftops in Dublin. She had never done anything like that before.”

Rondell accompanied her to the rooftop to prepare, beginning by having her walk on the narrow walls of two or three story buildings. “She’s a quick study. By the end she could grapple with an adversary, dive, do shoulder rolls, come up, draw a weapon—and put all those dynamics together.”

Adds Carano, “It was freezing in Dublin and we’d be up on these rooftops at 5:30 in the morning and there would be ice. The first jump was the scariest. There was no harness and I just looked down and knew that if I tripped I could fall to my death. But R.A. was wonderful and I trusted him completely. It is due to him that I was able to get over that fear. Once I got through that I couldn’t wait to get up there and run across those roofs and jump from one to the other.”

Carano also had to learn to handle a motorcycle for the film. “Not only had she never ridden a motorcycle before, she’d never even driven a stick shift car,” says Rondell. “Before we left for Europe, I put her on a little 125 Suzuki and gave her the ins and outs of how to start it and the clutching and breaking. She caught on very quickly. Then we went to the 696 Ducati Monster, which is a huge step up. It’s a big bike and very powerful and heavy, but Gina totally excelled at it.”

Rondell also worked with Aaron Cohen to translate realistic special operations techniques for practical filmmaking purposes. “The expertise that Aaron brought to the table was great,” he says. “It’s new and it’s raw and current to what is happening in the world today. We had some good debates about how things would work because sometimes things don’t work in film like they do in the real world.”

Ultimately, what audiences will see on the screen is a collaboration that makes both men proud. “R.A. has 25 years in the film business and I put my head down to him when it came to stunts,” says Cohen. “There was a great symmetry between us, a symbiotic flow. This is not just a fight movie; it’s a movie with a lot of fighting but there are weapons and tactical and counter-terrorist action.

“Haywire feels like a baby that we all birthed,” he concludes. “It reminded me of the military. There was a loose, kick-back, undisciplined way to it that tightened up the moment the leash was pulled. It came together in the moment, just like a real operation would, and it was mission-focused from the beginning.”

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Channing Tatum, Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas
Screenplay by: Steven Soderbergh
MPAA Rating: R for some violence.
Studio: Relativity Media
Release Date: January 20th, 2012