In a movie that's basically about watching a formidable female run, kick and punch her way through a world of treacherous males, one of the best exchanges comes when her betrayer orders a dapper assassin to terminate her. "I've never done a woman before," the designated killer says, to which the other guy replies: "You shouldn't think of her as being a woman." Good advice, given her awesome prowess, but how should we think of Mallory Kane, the special-ops agent played by Gina Carano, a mixed martial-arts virtuoso making her feature debut? As a fighting machine, one that registers ambient danger with all the efficiency of The Terminator and the light irony of James Bond, but also as a beautifully seductive construction at the center of a film that is itself an elegant machine. There's no deeper meaning to Steven Soderbergh's thriller than what meets the eye, yet its lustrous surfaces offer great and guilt-free pleasure.

The story starts in upstate New York, then moves to Barcelona, Dublin, New Mexico and Washington. The plot—basically betrayal followed by payback—pits Mallory against the unprincipled security contractor she's been working for, plus all of his shadowy minions. The action isn't nonstop, no matter what the trailer makes you think. Some of the most satisfying stretches come when something is about to happen, as in a very long and ominous tracking shot that follows Mallory down a Dublin sidewalk across the street from St. Stephen's Green. (Mr. Soderbergh, directing from a script by Lem Dobbs, did his own cinematography, which is richly understated when the colors aren't morphing into interludes of grainy black-and-white or baleful ocher.)

When something does happen, it's usually a violent confrontation between Mallory and her baselessly confident adversaries. In at least two instances she visits unusual pain and suffering on their genitals, but that's far from the only page in her playbook of righteous mayhem. Most of her moves are the ones Ms. Carano deploys in the relatively new arena of women's mixed martial arts, except that here, in the arena of mainstream action thrillers, the newly minted movie star must do more than dabble in the dramatic arts.

So how does she do? Really well, all things considered, meaning that most movie performances are constructed from discrete pieces, and this one is no exception; that her sultry voice may be a discreetly enhanced version of the one she uses in real life, and that her character, by the nature of the special-ops trade, finds her finest expression in exuberant physicality. It remains to be seen whether Ms. Carano's star presence will take her beyond action roles, but she's certainly appealing in this one, and very much at home in a strong cast that includes Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton and Michael Angarano. Keep an eye out too for a deer, but not in anyone's headlights.