Haywire (Steven Soderbergh, 2011)

The very beginning of the film sets it up perfectly. A scene in a coffee shop that could've come straight from a Twin Peaks episode. Following the incredible Contagion, Soderbergh continues bringing avant-garde sensitivities to seemingly mainstream films, Olivier Assayas's Boarding Gate being as close of an example I can think of. Like with Contagion, Soderbergh refuses a straightforward narrative. This time around three-quarters of the film is told by our main character, Mallory (Gina Carano in an perfect, fitting performance), while in a car with someone she's just taken hostage, until time catches up with them and we are thrust into a car chase in present story time. The flashback is told entirely visually and as Mallory tells her passenger the story, since it is shot from the exterior it creates a swarm of trees to appear on their faces. We also never see Mallory telling any part of the story, except at some points when she tells her passenger to keep all the names straight, as if trying to keep all the characters in order for the audience, one of the many satirical aspects of the film (along with the plethora of cameos, some of the stilted dialogue and acting, Fassbender's demise). Soderbergh, as usual, shoots (being the cinematographer himself) the film exceptionally well paying more attention to framing, sometimes reaching a level of abstractness, than any other 'commercial' director/cinematographer. The soundtrack at its best moments becomes incredibly abstract and minimalist, reminiscent of Tindersticks' scores for Claire Denis' films. This film is a masterpiece of contemporary American genre cinema.

Joe McCulloch's "Steven Soderbergh's Haywire and the Virtues of Getting Physical with Gina Carano" excerpts:

"Yet Carano must also deliver some dialogue, and I am convinced that her director, less wed to whys than hows, has made sure that everyone around her performs in a subtly unreal, stylized, arguably “bad” manner, embodied most perfectly by Ewan McGregor’s reediest possible American accent and most viscerally by the presence of one Channing Tatum..."

"Even on a purely visual level, Haywire is quite keenly set on upsetting expectations of audience gaze in a movie about a sexy action lady—for a helpful contrast, see last year’s Colombiana, un film de Olivier Megaton, and Zoë Saldana’s aptitude at squeezing into a body stocking she also wears as stockings—with the glamour of objectification cast entirely upon Carano’s handsome male co-stars; both Michael Fassbender and Antonio Banderas enjoy prominent chest-baring scenes, while Tatum finds himself tasked with the classic hapless, misled hero’s love interest role, and its compulsory scene of throwaway physical affection."