Can Soderbergh Bring Complexity to ‘Magic Mike’?
Most men, unsurprisingly, are dismissing Magic Mike for its unabashed approach to drawing in as many female audience members as possible. The studio has done a good job at making sure that’s clear. What I’ve noticed, though, is how little they’ve let people know that this is from Steven Soderbergh: the man behind films like the Ocean’s Elevenseries, Contagion, Haywire, and The Informant!.
He’s the most eclectic director alive. That’s a bold statement, sure, but look at his work over the last few years: he’s done dark character studies like The Girlfriend Experience, which was a micro-budget, 75-minute look at Sasha Grey (a known porn star) playing a call girl. He’s made an ensemble film that was decidedly gloomy and repressed with Contagion, a film I found rather excellent and devoid of character development because, let’s face it, that adds to the complexity of the film at hand. A film earlier this year, Haywire, showed Gina Carano kicking ass and that’s just about it. The story there is essentially nonexistent.
He takes ideas we’ve seen before and strips them to the bare essentials.
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My name's Eric Forthun. I write/film movie reviews, so you should check out the YouTube page, cleverly titled Cinematic Shadows.
