A Cage-Match Between Action and Story - "Haywire" Review

If there is a more stylistically experimental director in Hollywood than Steven Soderbergh, who at one second makes huge box-office hits like Ocean's 11 only to turn around the next second to direct a tiny film like Bubble, he has yet to be found.  Ever since his first film Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Soderbergh has been refining and perfecting his style; defined by hyperlink cinema storytelling, jazzy cinematography, and the use of dialogue-free scenes that rely on the movie's score to do the talking.

Soderbergh's strongest talent, it seems, is in his assembly of high-talent actors to star in all of his films.  From Traffic to Contagion to Ocean's 11, Soderbergh has proven himself the master of the ensemble cast.  However, recently Soderbergh has gone specifically out of his way to blend the lines between reality and fiction in his more focused casting.  This was most notable with his casting of porn star Sasha Grey in his film The Girlfriend Experience, where she starred as a high-end Manhattan prostitute.

In his newest film, Haywire, Soderbergh attempts to bring the same realism to his protagonist's performance that Sasha Grey, in her controversial role, brought to The Girlfriend Experience.  This time he has brought in celebrated MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter Gina Carano to play the powerful black-ops operative Mallory Kane.  Has casting an untested actress for her raw physicality paid off for Soderbergh in Haywire?