The Dizzies

No one watches a movie in a vacuum. You don’t check your real-world baggage at the door — something for which any good critic must account.

Several days before catching the new Steven Soderbergh action thriller “Haywire,” I learned that Soderbergh had made the movie on the rebound, fired from “Moneyball” on the eve of its shoot. Moreover, he got the idea of starring champion mixed martial arts fighter and glamorous “American Gladiator” ingénue Gina “Crush” Carano in the days after his termination, after watching her televised loss to a rival named Cyborg. They were both in the same place, the director thought.

This item, mentally filed as a back story for possible review use (“Off the mat — tale of revenge fueled by actual desire for same”), returned with a certain poignant pow when I saw “Haywire” — barely 24 hours after getting the pink slip from my own job of 30-plus years, writing weekly reviews for the Village Voice — sitting among erstwhile peers, watching a movie that I’d planned to write up but no longer could. Was I tearful? No, let’s say the movie vented my frustration as I reflexively scrawled “way better than Moneyball” on the back of the production notes.

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