Haywire

Gina Carano fights ugly in Haywire. She isn't throwing out straight-legged exhibition kicks designed to push-back, she's curving her limb to hook, wrangling enemies from inconvenient space, to other more advantageous positions. Mass centre shifted, Carano can beat them prone and break their arms. Everything is grist for Carano's traction action. Walls are springboards to unbalance her typically lithe male foes; splintering furniture an improv shrapnel to sting them up. Steven Soderbergh dispenses with the frenetic hyper-kinetics now associated with these methodical secret agent flicks, his fight staging is impassive, dispassionately tracking Carano from one mangle to the next. There are opponents, and they will break. During downtime, Carano's scowling reticence recalls Sean Connery's attention grabbing in the early 007s - that imperious way with the camera, demanding constant attention even when doing very little except standing around looking handsome.