Wallis, Wally, and William wallow in W.E.

W.E. (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Madonna. Abbie Cornish, Andrea Riseborough, James D'Arcy.

Boring drama that drowns a decent story in a dull one.

Apparently Madonna is a film director now. Why were we not warned?

W.E. is the story of two women: Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough), who caused a national scandal in 1936 when King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne to marry her; and Wally Winthrope (Abbie Cornish), a fictional 1990s housewife named after Simpson and obsessed with the romantic story of her life. The film shifts back and forth between their stories as Wally draws strength from Wallis (through some slightly bizarre imaginary interactions with her) to cope with her own unhappy marriage.

W.E. begins as a baffling mess, jumping at random between its two time periods and to different decades within those periods. One of the first scenes is of a woman we later learn is Wallis being assaulted by a man we later learn is her first husband. But there is no reference to this man again and no clue to the significance of this scene until near film's end, leaving a confusing loose end that nags long after the rest of the story has settled into something coherent.

Once it does settle down, W.E. has its charms. The Edward/Wallis romance has the makings of a classic love story once all that Nazi sympathizing business is scrubbed out. It's a tale deserving of a more in-depth look than the background treatment it received in The King's Speech last year. What is the real-life aftermath to a fairytale ending? What was the effect on Wallis's second husband? What did it cost Wallis, who traded her former life for one of public scrutiny and condemnation?

W.E. addresses these questions, but lacks the focus to do them justice. As an audience, we seem to spend more time hearing Wally talk about what a great story it is than we do actually seeing the story.

And that's the biggest problem with W.E.: Wally is the main character, not Wallis. It's her story-a much more ordinary, uninteresting, clichéd story-that gets the focus.

It's unclear what her purpose in this film even is. What real connection is there between these two stories beyond their superficial similarities? How does Wally's obsession with Wallis Simpson shape her own path? Her decision to escape a loveless, abusive marriage is quick and sensible, and there is little to indicate she needed help from a hallucination of a dead woman.

Andrea Riseborough also wears the performance crown as the charismatic and conflicted Wallis. We see her go from bursting with life and optimism to struggling to keep her chin up near the end of a lonely life (in an unfortunately brief glimpse at the royal marriage's decline). In the meantime, Abbie Cornish as Wally is forced to stare at people and objects with the same teary-eyed expression for nearly every frame she's onscreen.

The film's every shift from England to New York, as a result, is groan-inducing. The film might still have been a little dull and melodramatic if it had scrapped the Wally plotline entirely, but it would have avoided the aching tedium it provokes instead.

Rated R for material girls.
2.5 out of 5

Haywire (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Starring Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender.

Quality action movie resembling a less brain-damaged version of Salt.

A private black ops agent (Gina Carano) goes on the run after being betrayed by her employer.

There are twists and conspiracies in Haywire, but it's no intellectual thriller; it happily chooses style over substance. Soderbergh mixes modern action aesthetics with a '60s spy movie feel brought on by muted audio and visuals and a jazzy soundtrack by David Holmes.

The fight scenes starring Carano-an MMA fighter turned actor-are the movie's core; they're brutal, inelegant, and more realistic than most.

More surprising is the skill with which the film pulls off its moments of quiet tension. The opening scene in a rural diner, which drops us into something that looks a bit like the world's worst domestic abuse situation until we understand what's going on, gives a marvelous sense of anxious uncertainty. Later, a daylight walk down a lightly trafficked sidewalk has us looking everywhere for threats.

In between, however, the stylistic experiments and the storytelling through flashbacks add some needless convolution to a movie that's really just about Gina Carano beating the hell out of men.

Because it's Steven Soderbergh, the cast is absolutely packed with big names, both old and rising: Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender, and Ewan McGregor. It's an easy paycheck for all of them, but a daunting challenge for Carano, who has minimal experience performing with anything but her fists. That considered, she is more than capable in the lead role.

An unexceptional but worthy take on the genre.

Rated R for loin crushing.
3.5 out of 5