Former mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano spent years beating up her opponents in the ring before finally becoming a bona fide action star in Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 thriller Haywire. The groundwork had been perfectly laid out; her looks, femininity, and physicality along with a built in fanbase made her an attractive candidate for action movies. Haywire was a critical and mild commercial success, but mostly functioned as a (very successful) platform for introducing the world to Gina Carano, action star.
What happens though when Carano is expected to carry the load of a film that doesn’t have the benefit of being directed by someone as gifted as Steven Soderbergh? That’s the question of the day as the first trailer for In the Blood has been released and it’s hard to not be more than a little underwhelmed.
We get to see Carano running around some unnamed Caribbean island during a honeymoon from hell as she searches for her missing husband, but the whole thing has the distinctive smell of we’ve-seen-this-all-before. It also doesn’t help that early reactions to the film have been particularly scathing.
Fortunately, In The Blood does have the benefit of an excellent supporting cast. Luis Guzmán is prominently displayed in the trailer as a local police chief and even gets the chance to spout a particularly amusing line to Carano (“Maybe you can torture people in America… but not here.”) Rounding out the cast are a bunch of respectable talents too, such as Cam Gigandet, Amaury Nolasco, Ismael Cruz Cordoba, Treat Williams, Stephen Lang and Danny Trejo.
Okay, so maybe we’re not giving director John Stockwell enough credit. Maybe, he actually is simply the smartest man around. His films are usually duds, but In the Blood represents his fifth project since 2002 that is based in the tropics, so apparently he doesn’t mind working in the studio system as long as it gives him the chance to live on an island for a while.
And who knows at this point? Perhaps In the Blood will defy its early negative perception and form the starting point for a trilogy of films about Carano searching for missing newlywed husbands. We’ll just have to wait and see.
What do you think about the film so far? Are you excited to see Gina Carano beating up police in the Caribbean? Sound off below!