Despite some thrilling combat choreography executed with flair by MMA champ Gina Carano, Steven Soderbergh clearly phoned it in here. The barely-there plot involves Mallory (Carano), a double-crossed Black Ops agent who goes rogue in an uninteresting search for revenge. Both the script and Carano's acting are painfully wooden, though she seems most at ease when opposite Hollywood it-man Michael Fassbender. The fight scenes might be worth the ticket price, if not for the frustrating way the film's gender stereotyping subverts its boldness in casting a real-life, badass woman in a gritty action flick. Far from feminist, Mallory is "one of the boys" — that is, until the inevitable isn't-she-so-pretty-in-a-party-dress scene. But it's Ewan McGregor, impishly nefarious as Carano's greedy boss, who shows the film's true colors when he warns, "You shouldn't think of her as a woman. No, that would be a mistake." Oh. I thought that was the point.
