DVD reviews: The Descendants | Haywire

THE casting in The Descendants really shouldn’t work. It’s a film, after all, in which George Clooney plays a cuckolded husband who discovers his comatose wife was not only about to leave him for another man, but was about to leave him for another man played by a guy whose last significant role was as Shaggy in the live-action Scooby-Doo movies (Matthew Lillard).

THE DESCENDANTS (20th Century Fox, £19.99)

HAYWIRE

(Momentum, £17.99)

It’s a measure, then, of both Clooney’s casually brilliant performance and Alexander Payne’s subtle direction that this potential flaw barely even registers. Subtly undermining his star’s surface charm, charisma and handsomeness, Payne unlocks what really makes Clooney an attractive actor: his generosity of spirit and his underappreciated ability to convey a torrent of twisted emotions without saying much.

That helps the film avoid the trap of being just another mid-life crisis movie. As Clooney’s wealthy real-estate lawyer Matt King grapples with suddenly having to be more than the “back-up parent” to his two daughters, the film becomes instead a wry, amusing and poignant look at what it really takes to become a better person without glorifying in easy ways Clooney’s character. In the end it’s a film that defies expectations at every turn – and is all the better for it.

And speaking of defying expectations – polymath director Steven Soderbergh brings an enjoyably artful approach to ass-kicking mayhem with Haywire, a stripped down, tightly wound riff on the rogue agent revenge flick. MMA-star Gina Carano – picking up the gauntlet laid down by Steven Seagal and Jason Statham before her – makes her action-movie debut as a betrayed black ops assassin on the run from a series of shady government spooks.

Deploying a similar fractured narrative style to Soderbergh’s earlier film, The Limey (both films were written by Lemm Dobbs), Soderbergh succeeds in making the propulsive run-kick-punch trajectory of Carano’s character more compelling, filling out her back story in ways that make her considerable fighting skills more dazzling when unleashed.

Soderbergh aids Carano in this respect by shooting the fight scenes in a fluid style that really shows off what she can do, while also surrounding her with great actors (and Ewan McGregor), who do most of the dramatic heavy lifting.

• To order these DVDs, call The Scotsman on 01634 832789.