An average movie

Honestly, when I heard about this project, I thought it sounded awesome. Indeed, after making ‘The Girlfriend Experience’, a movie starring Sasha Grey, a notorious porno star, as a high-end call girl, Soderbergh was this time making a (supposedly) kinetic spy action flick starring Gina Carano, a MMA champion. Furthermore, there was an impressive supporting cast so I was pretty sure it would be a winner. Eventually, it didn’t get much love when it was released but it was still eager to check it out anyway. Unfortunately, the whole thing turned out to be a huge disappointment and easly the weakest movie directed by Steven Soderbergh since ‘Full Frontal’ back in 2002. The point is that all the ingredients were there but the mix didn’t work out somehow. Of course, you could blame the limited acting skills of Gina Carano but I think she did what she could with the material and I’m sure she could impress us if she gets another fair shot. Above all, I thought the whole thing was just plain lazy. I mean, take the soundtrack for example, it was just some annoying generic spy tunes and it would have worked better if they got rid off it. On top of that, the story was not only rather non-sensical but seriously pedestrian and underwhelming. Finally, even though Carano was pretty bad-ass in the action scenes, Soderbergh, who is usually a fine director, didn’t manage to bring much tension in those scenes which felt pretty lifeless. The main problem I have with this director is that, pretty much like some other directors such as Woody Allen or Michael Winterbottom, instead of spending 3 or 4 years on one project and make sure it is a great flick, he made no less than 18(!) movies in 14 years and, as a result, you get such half-baked features. Anyway, to conclude, I think my rating is actually really generous here, but I guess it is still worth a look, if only for the awesome cast and for the interesting potential displayed by Gina Carano.

6/10