Steven Soderbergh has announced that he’ll soon retire from directing to become a painter, and this international thriller—his 23rd feature since 1989—registers as the work of someone who’s become both very good at and very bored with his job. Mixed-martial-arts fighter Gina Carano stars as a freelance commando who goes rogue after being double-crossed by her employers, her gender providing the only antidote to a crushingly generic plot. There’s a good deal of pleasure to be had in the clockwork precision of her hand-to-hand combat, which Soderbergh often shoots in profile to showcase her wall-climbing backflips. The story surrounding it is comparably smooth, skilled, and mechanical, though a lot less memorable. With Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael Angarano, and, as vaguely comic heavies, Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas.
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