Haywire is director Steven Soderbergh’s experiment in the field of the action thriller, and it’s sparse and arty and pretty boring too. Soderbergh takes another non-actor, this time MMA fighter Gina Carano, and builds a spy thriller around the talents of this imposing fighter. Carano is no actor and her flat line delivery will routinely remind you of her limitations, but man alive does this woman just kick ass. To Soderbergh’s credit, the fight scenes occur in longer takes at a safe distance so that we the audience can watch and comprehend. Carano impresses as a physical specimen, both as a fighter and in other ways (she’s certainly got movie-star looks). I just wish this had been a more traditional action movie instead of Soderbergh’s jazzy, clinical genre experiment. There’s a handful of fights and a handful of chases, but mostly the plot is tied up in knots of who betrayed who and why. The dialogue volume is also curiously kept at a very low level, which obscures many conversations (I was forced to turn on the subtitles just to keep up). The plot itself is such a familiar rehash so why doesn’t Soderbergh pump it with more action? A bevy of stars appear in this thing (Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum) but gives them precious little to do. Unless Haywire is in fight mode, it’s a rather soggy bore. The minimalism in a genre known for bombast is commendable but when that minimalism also stretches into plot and character and pacing, then you’ve entered into another Soderbergh indie experiment. For my money, Haywire is too sparse, too generic, and too dull to recommend, but I’d love to see more of Carano cracking skulls.

Nate’s Grade: C