Soderbergh Talks Carano and ‘Knockout’

British film magazine Empire cornered director Steven Soderbergh recently. Did they punch him in the ear in critical response to “Solaris” or “Ocean’s Twelve”?

They did not. But they did ask about his recent casting of Gina Carano as the lead in “Knockout,” a spy thriller due to begin shooting in February.

“My feeling was, If I don’t do this, somebody else will,” Soderbergh said. “I felt, somebody is going to look at her and go, ‘She should be in a movie!’ And I felt like, ‘Why shouldn’t I be the person saying that?’...I’d been wanting to make a spy action film for a while, but hadn’t really determined what I was going to bring to it that would distinguish it from the traditional approach. Then I thought, ‘Why don’t I just build it around her?’ She can actually break people in half. I was interested in doing something ultra-realistic.”

Soderbergh added that Carano will play an “outsourced” government employee hired to take on dirty-laundry espionage work. His comment about her being capable off-screen is interesting, but do moviegoers really care whether an actor can really fight? Is “Rocky” a better movie with Gerry Clooney in the title role?