Last night I got the chance to see the new action flick Haywire, two days before it’s released.

Haywire is about a freelance covert operative named Mallory Kane (Gina Carano). She is sent out by her handler (Ewan MacGregor) to do various global jobs which governments can’t authorize and heads of state would rather not know about. After a mission to rescue a hostage in Barcelona, Mallory is quickly dispatched on another mission to Dublin. When the operation goes haywire, Mallory finds out that she has been double crossed and needs to use all of her skills to escape an international manhunt. She wants to make it back to the United States to protect her father and exact revenge on those that have betrayed her.

Director Steven Soderbergh has been flirting with retirement for the past couple of years. After watching this mess and knowing his next movie is the unintentionally laughable Magic Mike, I say quit while you’re going down hill.

Soderbergh has this fetish for trying to take non-actresses and turn them into the leading ladies of his movies. He took porn star Sasha Grey and gave her the lead in his little scene The Girlfriend Experience, which was awful. Now he takes MMA fighter Gina Carano and tries to turn her into an actress, while showing off her impressive fighting skills.

Carano’s Mallory Kane is basically the love child of Jason Bourne and Evelyn Salt. Her fight scenes are impressive, although I still cringe when I see a girl getting beaten up by a guy. She kicks the crap out of Channing Tatum within the first 5 minutes of the movie, so at least therewas a bright spot. Tatum makes Keanu Reeves look like Laurence Oliver.

What about this cast that Carano leads? MacGregor, Tatum, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender and Bill Paxton. Such an odd mix. The dialogue doesn’t help either. It’s clunky and unrealistic. Remember when I said everytime she gets hit I would cringe? The script made me cringe more.

Haywire has to be worst action flick (with a solid cast, crew, etc.) that I have seen since 2008′s Wanted.

I give HAYWIRE *1/2 out of ****.