Steven Soderbergh is a filmmaker, who is not only responsible for major commercial blockbusters like Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven (remake) and Erin Brockovich, but is also the brain behind hard-hitting unconventional and less commercial films like Sex, Lies and Videotape and Che. A download of his latest project Haywire cements his capabilities at experimenting with real life professionals in a mainstream commercial movie, and his trademark unconventional touch to it.

Soderbergh’s latest attempt is more that worth a watch, for it is his first true action film. The entire idea behind Haywire crept into Soderbergh’s mind, when he caught Gina Carano, the actress cum MMA fighter, performing impressive action stunts in her MMA-based 2009 film, Blood and Bone. With Gina as the lead, anticipations are running amok in the online world.

When we download Haywire movie, we experience Soderbergh’s cinematic finesse, as he weaves a story for Gina to come up with her bone-crunching and jaw-shattering action stunts.

The story is developed around Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), a professional assassin, who is taken up by organizations around the world, sent by her handler to execute missions that cannot be authorized by the government and are hidden from state-heads.

This film begins with a successful mission to Barcelona that is followed by another mission to Dublin. Unlike the first one, this mission goes haywire and Mallory feels that she’s double crossed. It is from here that Mallory has to use her skills, determination and power to escape a global manhunt, reach the U.S. back on time, in order to save her family and avenge the double cross.

A plot like this that promises action in the purest sense, demands a lot from actors alongside someone as new into the profession as Gina Carano. To meet such performance criterions, Soderbergh has ensured that the cast is star-studded with actors like Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Michael Angarano, Channing Tatum and Mathieu Kassovitz. The moment we watch Haywire online, we realize that the experienced cast complements for Gina’s freshness as an actress.

Apart from the remarkable fight sequences that Carano is blessed with in the project, Soderbergh’s unconventional and convincing treatment to character-centric plot developments and music by David Holmes adds to the aura of this action-thriller. The fight sequences with Foley work, sounds more crispy and realistic than usual action-packed sequences that we are used to.

With added-effects they appear as if perfected by a filmmaker, who, unlike Soderbergh, has been churning out stuff like this since years. To put it in short, the film is expected to be labeled as Steven Soderbergh’s bold and audacious attempt to depict the rarely found yet magical harmonious co-existence of brains and brawn in the contemporary action cinema.

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