Carano convinces, even if Haywire’s not the action movie you expected

There’s an old adage in movies: if you introduce a gun, somebody’s going to get shot. Haywire inspires a related question: Why put Gina Carano in handcuffs if you’re not going to then make her fight a swarm of bad guys?

That’s just one of the more puzzling elements of the Steven Soderbergh-helmed spy thriller. Granted, I’m using the term “spy thriller” loosely.

Haywire is not the movie the trailers are trying to sell you, which is The Bourne Identity with boobs. Instead, it’s a soft-focus, low-key jazzy arthouse “fuck you” to quick-cut Michael Bayhem-style ADD action spectacles. It’s the anti-Bourne, a watered-down martini that leaves you neither shaken nor stirred.

And yet there’s something there, something in its ultra-cool ‘70s vibe that makes you forgive the by-the-numbers story, the sluggish pacing, the cheap made-for-cable quality. While the sum of Haywire’s parts adds up to a pilot for a TV series about a hot ass-kicking CIA super-agent, like Alias without all the glitz and glam and Jane Bond shine, it’s that very stripped-down pseudo-realism that provides the biggest punch.

The chases unspool with a determined this-is-what-it-would-really-be-like feel, while the fights deliver a degree of verisimilitude missing from 99 percent of on-screen fisticuffs. Nothing fancy, nothing CGI-enhanced, no wire fu. Just abrupt and brutal, punches, kicks, a couple of chokes. No actress could’ve pulled them off as well as Gina Carano. She is the first female action star you actually believe could beat up her larger, stronger male opponents. She throws a punch the way it should be thrown, and she takes one the same way. Stick Angelina Jolie in there and it would be like watching a stick figure on a string. And for the most part, Soderbergh just stands back and lets her do her thing.

On the acting side, Carano has charisma, charm and she mostly holds her own opposite heavyweight thesps like Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas. Occasionally she appears a bit out of her depth, although her acting never dips to porn-star levels, but she’s also not relied upon to deliver any great depth or emotion. And her voice, which was inexplicably digitally lowered in post-production, is only distracting in the first few moments and then only if you know what she really sounds like.

In the end, Haywire is not the explosive action debut many hoped it would be for Carano. What it is, though, is something smarter, a genre exercise that flexes some pretty big muscles. It’s more interesting than exciting, a diversion that’s both ponderous and worth pondering.

Still, it makes me wonder why the shackled Carano wasn’t called upon to battle her way out of that predicament. I guess that was one more cliché Soderbergh opted to avoid.