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For years, Hollywood has taken wrestlers, bodybuilders and sports stars and transformed them into action heroes -- albeit with varying degrees of success (for every Arnold, there’s a Shaq). So it’s a little surprising it’s taken this long for anyone to try to duplicate the formula with a female athlete, like acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh has with Haywire, which is headlined by former MMA star and American Gladiator Gina Carano.

(Interesting Side Note: To mark today's release of Haywire, and to help lower our readers' chances of getting beat up by a girl at any point in the future, AskMen and Relativity will be giving one of you an "Everlake 100 Year Kit" consisting of a punching bag, boxing gloves and a headwrap. To throw your name in the ring, sign up for our weekly newsletter; the entry link will be in tomorrow's mailout.)

Haywire’s plot is familiar enough: A black ops “super-soldier” is burned by her employers and framed for a crime she didn’t commit. With no one to trust and the subject of an international manhunt, Mallory Kane must uncover who betrayed her -- and why -- in order to clear her name. Just about every major action star has punched, kicked and shot his way through a movie like this, but it’s not just the gender-bending action and stunt work that’s making people sit up and take notice; it’s that Carano actually looks believable doing it.

But while rail-thin actresses like Zoe Saldana can make female-driven action movies an exercise in suspension of disbelief, Carano’s certainly not the first leading lady to show she’s got what it takes to hang with the guys (and then some). And with Haywire hitting theaters today, we’ve compiled a list of four more hardcore heroines who prove that action isn’t just a man’s game.

No.5 Milla Jovovich

As Alice in the Resident Evil series, Milla Jovovich is a veritable one-woman army. And while this former model has done her fair share of action movies over the course of her career, it was the video game movie franchise that made both Jovovich and her character iconic -- despite never appearing in the games. Milla can thank husband and B-movie writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson for that, and together they provided a winning formula others have since tried to copy (see: Kate Beckinsale and the Underworld movies).

But it takes more than just supermodel good looks and a leather catsuit to make a female action hero, and Jovovich has had the staying power to bring the wildly successful franchise to five films (and counting) because she’s more than just another hot girl fighting through the apocalypse in slow motion. In the later films, psychic powers were added to Alice’s deadly arsenal, but she didn’t really need them. The zombies’ odds were already unfair as is.

No.4 Angelina Jolie

When Soderbergh first came up with the inspiration for Haywire, part of his goal was to show that Angelina Jolie wasn’t the only woman who could headline an action movie. No other actress has made a career out of playing the hero quite like Jolie, and even now she’s still a genuine female-action-star hit factory. The Oscar-winning actress has done video game movies, comic book movies, played super-spies and deadly assassins, and in Salt, took a role originally written for Tom Cruise, resulting in a female Jason Bourne. But it’s the Tomb Raider movies that earn Jolie a spot on this list. Sure, they weren’t exactly award-worthy films, but no one else could’ve filled out Lara Croft’s signature tank top and short shorts nearly as convincingly as Jolie.

No.3 Gina Carano

Gina Carano makes an auspicious debut as a female action hero as former-Marine-turned-mercenary Mallory Kane in Haywire, doling out pain to both anonymous henchman and action movie guys like Channing Tatum. And while Carano underwent intensive military training to play the super-spy, her real-life experience also helped her pull off some of the most bone-crunching fight scenes in recent memory.

Trained in Muay Thai and with a 7-1 record in the Octagon, the so-called “face of women’s MMA” and her imposing physique meant Soderbergh didn’t need to cheat with stunt doubles, wire work or clever editing. Carano certainly looks the part -- like she could hold her own with just about anyone casting directors can throw at her, and all of Soderbergh’s roster of A-list leading men (save Tatum) seem woefully undermatched against her.

She may not be much of an actor (at least not yet), but then again that’s never been much of a prerequisite for being a successful action hero. With her knockout good looks and deadly leg locks, Carano doesn’t just signal the arrival of a new action star on the scene, she also forces us to rethink what a female action hero can be. As Haywire’s top villain warns his henchman, “Don’t think of her as being a woman. That’s a mistake.” We think Carano’s costar sparring partners would agree.

No.2 Uma Thurman

As The Bride in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill double-feature, Uma Thurman proved ladies could be just as successful (and compelling) at enacting steely vengeance as guys. Thurman slices and dices her way through an almost endless string of foes over the course of the two films, but it was her mano-a-mano battles with her female costars that showed The Bride at her most badass. Doing her best Bruce Lee impression, Thurman transformed into a kung fu master as she sought her revenge, destroying living rooms, mobile homes and coffins in the process. But as deadly as she proved with a katana, Thurman’s Black Mamba could also make men’s hearts explode with just the tip of her finger. Now that’s hardcore.

No.1 Sigourney Weaver

When it comes to female action heroes, one woman stands head and shoulders above the rest. As Ripley in the Alien franchise, Sigourney Weaver routinely and repeatedly stood up to the type of monsters that still make grown men cower on their sofas. Together with Terminator’s Linda Hamilton, Weaver effectively rewrote the book on the female action hero as she faced off against those acid-drooling extraterrestrials, paving the way for subsequent generations -- and women like Carano. Often considered one of the best action heroes of all time, male or female, Weaver’s Ripley wasn’t there to be anyone’s eye candy or love interest. She was there for one simple reason: to kick serious alien ass. Which means if Gina Carano’s career takes off as much as we hope it does, she won’t just have Soderbergh to thank.