Are you the kind of person who like a cinematic challenge? Who likes to chat about a film all the way home, reading new things into it as you listen to your pal’s opinion? If so, avoid Haywire, maintaining the distance of at least a roundhouse kick. This is junk-food in film form, grand while you watch it but you’ve forgotten all about it an hour afterwards.

It stars Gina Carano, who was our second Álainn or Appallin’ all the way back, and is a bit of a  heroine to our kick-boxing webmistress.

Gina is Mallory, literally a kick-ass agent for a shady government-hired company of mercenaries. Her boss, Ewan McGregor, realises that she’s bigger than the company and sells her out. Or he tries to. She pummels seven shades of shite out of the bloke who’s supposed to kill her (Micheal Fassbender) and goes on a Bourne buzz, trying to figure it all out.

Personally, I’m an action movie fan, so I loved it. Major pluses are the fact that it’s obvious that Gina is actually doing all of the ass-kickery herself, and the fact that the director (Steven Soderberg) is obviously loving it. The fight scenes are realistically ouchie and impressive in equal measure.

To add to that, a large section of the film is set in Dublin (that’s Connolly station, left), which is a great distraction. Don’t worry, the accents are all ok, and there isn’t a hint of a leprechaun. Quite the opposite, the continuity is spot on and when Mallory is running around Dublin, it’s all geographically accurate -- there’s no  turning a corner Temple Bar just to end up in the Phoenix Park.

The film hangs completely on Carano and she does ok. She looks gorgeous and fights like a pro, it’s just a pity she didn’t get a few more acting lessons. Any scene where she says more than one sentence is a step too far for her, but there are only a couple of them as Soderberg is aware of her short-comings and has her surrounded by excellent actors, including Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton and Antonio Banderas as well as McGregor and Fassbender.

Haywire is silly, but (wo)man is it fun. Here’s hoping there’s a sequel.

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