This week's new DVD & Blu-ray

Haywire You can usually tell when someone who fights for a living is put into a movie, as the names in the credits are beefed up with prefixes like "Stone Cold". For mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano's latest big-screen appearance there are no such signifiers, but then this isn't a typical example of the sub-genre. For one thing, it's actually a decent movie. Steven Soderbergh continues on his career-long quest to be the director with the most varied CV (his other 2011 offering was the serious and downbeat Contagion). In crafting a film around the considerable talents of non-actor Carano, Soderbergh has delivered a stark, sleek and stripped-down action movie. Carano play a private firm black ops agent who's hung out to dry by her contractors, and forced to fight her way to the truth in order to clear her name. It's a role that purposely doesn't put many demands on her acting skills (although she's perfectly fine in it), and Soderbergh has Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender and others to take up the thesping slack. We know her motivation, all emoting is ditched, and Carano's left to display the punching and kicking abilities she was hired for. For the numerous fight scenes, Soderbergh holds off on the editing and just lets her do her thing. Even the soundtrack drops away, all the better to hear every bone-shattering blow. Like The Raid, this is an action movie with all the rubbish bits cut out. Blu-ray & DVD, Momentum True Blood: The Fourth Season After vampires and shape shifters, now fairies are added to the fun supernatural mix. Blu-ray & DVD, Warners/HBO The Grey Liam Neeson is pitted against deadly wolves in the wilderness. Blu-ray & DVD, EIV Ghost In The Shell – Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society Movie-length offering from the excellent animated TV series – grown-up sci-fi. Blu-ray & DVD, Manga Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things & Dead Of Night Cracking double bill of highly inventive early 1970s zombie flicks from prolific director Bob "A Christmas Story" Clark. DVD, Nucleus