Steven Soderbergh has made it clear that the movie Haywire exists solely because he saw Gina Carano in one of her mixed martial arts fights on television. I’d like to think he also spent part of that particular evening hitting the PREV button on his remote control to check in on a screening of Salt on HBO, and that the contrast between the abject phoniness of Angelina Jolie as an ass-kicking action hero when compared to Carano’s real deal qualifications is what stirred him to creative motion. Now I think Jolie is a gifted and, thanks to her towering fame, somewhat underrated actress, but when I see her racing through one of the roles that earn her the biggest paychecks, I can’t help by think her skinny arms look like sapling branches straining hungrily towards the sun. I have a hard time believing she can tear open a bag of tortilla chips, much less sock hulking beefcakes into submission. There are no such suspension of disbelief issue watching Carano play a brutality machine formidable enough that another character warns a hitman being dispatched to take her out, “Oh, you shouldn’t think of her as a woman. That would be a mistake.”

Carano plays Mallory, a powerhouse agent who specializes in shady dealings that require a certain fidelity with both gunplay and fisticuffs. She’s actually on her way out of the agency she works for when she’s drawn in for cinematically popular “one last job,” and that naturally sets into motions all sorts of circuitous double-dealings that set her on the lam from brutes who are trying to eradicate her. Mallory, however, does not go gentle into that good night. Appropriately, the hand-to-hand combat seen on screen is fierce and bruising, highly physical in a way that both feels utterly natural and hints at intricate, inventive fight choreography. Mostly, Soderbergh continues with the quality that has been predominant in his career at least since the point he revived it in 2000 with the Erin Brockovich and Traffic: he takes the overly familiar patterns of Hollywood filmmaking, strips them down to their essence and find ways to make the hackneyed freshly invigorating again, largely by finding the hidden key to unearthing and emphasizing the most believable elements. Soderbergh wants the audience to marvel at Carano’s strength and power, but he wants to heighten the impact by making it clear that everything she’s doing is difficult. It’s physically taxing, and, importantly, it’s damn hard to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B when there’s a small army of men standing in the way. There’s no time for glib one-liners (well, maybe a couple) because this is hard work, dammit.

Carano delivers mightily for Soderbergh, and it’s not hard to see why he wanted to build a film around her. Not only is she clearly tough as can be, but she’s striking on screen in every way. The camera may not love her, but it’s surely smitten, and she’s attractive enough that she looks like a version of Catherine Zeta-Jones who was slipped some Super Soldier Serum. Great as she is at punching, she’s not very good at acting, but then neither is her co-star Bill Paxton, and he does it for a living. She’s got presence to burn, of the sort that all the acting classes in the world can’t teach. She belongs on that screen. And I dare you to tell her otherwise.