Against hefty odds, Gina Carano’s covert ops hard-nut Mallory Kane ably obliterates all comers in Steven Soderbergh’s revenge smack-’em-up. Likewise, Haywire delivers an agi♕le drop-kick to doubts stacked against it.

It isn’t Soderbergh at his most Oscar-fit ( Traffic ), artful ( Solaris ) or ambitious ( Che ), but it’s dispatched with the brusque style of his keenest genre cuts ( The Limey , Ocean’s Eleven ), sending a smarting message to action flyweights everywhere: you do it like this.

MMA fighter Carano hasn’t acted before. Deferred release dates gave Soderbergh time to knock out Contagion since shooting it. Worrying signs, both. But no scars 🗹of post-൩production panic are visible.

More crucially, Soderbergh bests earlier work with a non-actor ( The Girlfriend Experience ) by cleaving closely to Carano’s strengths: you’ll believe she can do more damage than Salt and Hanna combined.

Limey writer Lem Dobbs’ globe-trotting script is cavalier at best, crude at worst. But it doesn’t faff about, opening and closing with the same word and mincing few others in between.

After Kane escapes a takedown bid by fellow operative Aaron (Channing Tatum), her backstory gets info-dumped to hostage-to-tell-plot-to Scott (Michael Angarano). Any remaining tidbits are spilled at the end, where shady, well-cast supporting roles (oily Michael Doug🃏las, beardy Antonio Banderas) click into cursory focus.

But Haywire isn’t about story or character. It’s about slick, muscular tag-team action chops. Kane was betrayed on a Barcelona extradition mission, but details are less important than Soderbergh’s jazzy montage of breathtaking efficiency, cut to David Holmes’s lithe score: clipped, clean, cool.

Point-man Ken (Ewan McGregor) set Kane up, but conspiracies areꩵ backgrounded to flaunt Carano’s physicality, multi-smackdowns peaking 💫as she decimates Michael Fassbender and high-class hotel furnishings.

Sure, limitations linger. Carano has charisma but lacks range, rendering human intrigue involving her dad (Bill Paxton) and Tatum as dead weight. Arguably, Soderbergh&𒁏rsquo;s tendency to deliver two films in quick succession still maxes momentum a♔t the cost of emotion.

But pared-back purity of purpose is Haywire ’s point – and it’s played with tough panache. By thꦕe time Kane reaches Ken, you&rsquo﷽;ll be too busy keeping up with the punches to fret over subtleties.