I’ve been lucky enough to catch quite a number of new movies at Carolina Cinemas lately.

Haywire (2011) – Rated R for some violence.

“A last-minute mission in Dublin turns deadly for stunning secret operative Mallory Kane when she realizes she’s been betrayed — and that her own life is no longer safe. Now, to outwit her enemies, she’ll simply have to outlast them.”

Okay ignore my title. Michael Fassbender is in this which allowed me to segue from yesterday’s A Dangerous Method but he is only briefly in this so it is a little misleading.

Do not go into Haywire thinking that this is a Steven Soderbergh film. Soderbergh did direct this film as he did last year’s delightfully scary Contagion but Haywire does not feel like a Soderbergh film. Apparently Soderbergh saw star Gina Carano fight and built a movie around her talents.

Haywire has a fairly large cast but except for star Gina Carano, no one has much screen time. Presumably because of both this reason and Soderbergh as director, some fairly big names appear in Haywire in small parts. I actually didn’t recognize Antonio Banderas the first time he appeared (that ended once he used his wonderful voice). Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, the aforementioned Michael Fassbender, Bill “Game Over, Man” Paxtion, and Channing Tatum round out the cast.

So aside from the minor distraction of those names, the weight of the film falls on Gina Carano. How does she handle it? Well she won’t be winning an Academy Award anytime soon. While she doesn’t mumble, much of her delivery is flat. On the other hand she really kicks butt. She beats up nearly everyone in the film and you really buy that she could.

I do not understand why Soderbergh did not have a better story crafted for Carano. The spy story in this is so trite and cliched that it borders on parody. The only refreshing aspect is that it is about private contractors but Ronin covered this to a certain extent last century.

This brings us to the action. The action is well staged and thankfully Soderbergh disdains the use of shaky-cam. This allows us to revel in the many beatdowns Gina Carano issues. If you view this more as a martial arts film than a spy film then I think it really succeeds. The fight scenes are visceral, brutal and realistic. I especially loved Carano’s scene with Fassbender.

So to sum up, Haywire is a very enjoyable film if you like fight scenes. If you don’t then there isn’t enough here to recommend it. I would really like to see Carano become an action star (in much the same way that Liam Neeson releases one every year at this time) because she really sells the physicality.