Only Steven Soderbergh could produce a slick, modern, cine-literate deconstruction of the Hollywood action caper that also manages to be a rollicking good ride. With the high-style Haywire, he takes the most hackneyed, secret-agent-double-crossed-by-her-paymasters storyline imaginable and directs the living hell out of it. He drafts in former American Gladiator Gina Carano as svelte, skull-smashing special operative Mallory Kane.

What follows is a feminist tirade in the mould of Kill Bill as Mallory navigates the globe and coolly makes a string of potential assassins – Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum and a ratty, side-parted Ewan McGregor – her unwitting punchbags. The combat scenes are ferocious, beautiful and refreshingly original, with the conventional frantic editing and ear-splitting techno stripped away to leave something closer to silent ballet (with pained grunting).

To prove that he’s taking all the pseudo-serious expositionary dialogue with a pinch of salt, Soderbergh infuses the material with various nods to Hitchcock classics such as Notorious and North by Northwest, and the finale is a brutal comic inversion of From Here to Eternity’s iconic beach scene.