Haywire

Former MMA attraction Gina Carano stars in Stephen Soderbergh's briskly shot film about a female spy/merc (Mallory Kane) who's been double-crossed and is on the run.

The script isn't much more than a framework to propel the plot with some scenes with Carano kicking butt, of which she does quite well, though she has this sort of Jackie Chan quality to her fight moves that will make you laugh with how she dispatches the guys who intended harm to her character Mallory.  They did dub Carano's voice with someone else who still gave off a flatness to the vocal inflections, it was a little distracting at first, but after awhile it didn't bother me all that much.  It makes you wonder how Carano sounded in her own voice, maybe she might have given off a more monotone vocal performance in her first film, so they opted to dub her dialogue to punch it up a bit (though it still wasn't all that expressive).

The film title "Haywire" is a puzzler as I never got the impression that Mallory's world went all haywire on her, the script just plays it too cool and subdued to feel like Mallory was in over her head as she tried to regain her footing and deal with the situation.

Carano's acting is okay, not great, but not terrible, but she comes alive with the action scenes, with minimal stunt doubles, so it was quite entertaining to see a female doling out some ass-kicking without it being evident it was a stunt double doing most of the heavy lifting.

I give it 2.75 stars, or a grade of B-.