HAYWIRE (15).

Action/Thriller/Romance. Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Angarano, Bill Paxton, Anthony Brandon Wong. Director: Steven Soderbergh.

Haphazard and frenetic by name, Haywire is a coolly assured and breathlessly choreographed action thriller that has been tailored to the dazzling athletic prowess of its leading lady.

Harking from a mixed martial arts background, Gina Carano is 5ft 8in of pure muscle and dynamism, who scythes through stunt sequences with breathtaking speed and power.

She could easily bruise the egos of James Bond and Jason Bourne, wrapping her legs around one assailant in Steven Soderbergh’s film and crushing his neck between her thighs as she deflects his flailing punches.

In this battle of the sexes, the female is far more deadly than dozens of males.

Freelance gun-for-hire Mallory Kane (Carano) is one of the best in the business, keeping a cool head when the rest of her team panic during a bungled operation in Barcelona to rescue a kidnapped Chinese journalist.

Her handler, Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), accepts a job from the enigmatic Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas) and dispatches Mallory to Dublin, where she must pose as the wife of fellow assassin Paul (Michael Fassbender) and neutralise a high-profile asset. However, the mission is fatally compromised and Mallory discovers that her friends have betrayed her, marking her for death.

Director Soderbergh, who put an artful gloss on the disaster movie with Contagion, is assured behind the camera, editing together each bone-crunching skirmish with brio.

For adrenaline junkies, the film delivers.

However, all of the thrills come at the expense of plot, characterisation and emotion.

Lem Dobbs’s script provides a flimsy narrative on which to hang each high-octane sequence and for all her physical flair, Carano doesn’t show much in the way of performance skills.

She is the V8 engine thundering beneath the bonnet of a second-hand hatchback.