Plot: A top CIA operative, Avery Graves, is blackmailed by terrorists into betraying her own country to save her kidnapped husband. Cut off from her team, she turns to her underworld contacts to help locate the coveted intelligence that the kidnappers want. As she is betrayed at every turn, Avery finds herself in a deadly race to deliver a ransom that could trigger a global crisis.
Review: Thirty years ago, mediocre action movies were populated with mid-level or over-the-hill action stars and had their release relegated to video stores. These same movies were commonly found at your local Redbox a decade ago. Today, the glut of streaming services constantly needs new fodder to entice audiences to choose them over the competition, which means projects that otherwise would not be able to land top talent are now showcases for movie stars slumming it for a paycheck. Canary Black boasts a director and star with experience making action movies starring in a film that, on the surface, looks like it could be good. Dropped onto Prime Video with no fanfare, Canary Black is an instantly forgettable replication of countless other action movies that offers nothing to distinguish itself from every other action movie out there.
Canary Black opens with Agent Avery Graves, donned in a skintight catsuit and blond wig reminiscent of Charlize Theron’s hairstyle in Atomic Blonde. Graves infiltrates a Tokyo skyscraper, where she takes out a bevy of thugs while retrieving a flash drive. The entire sequence is filmed in a way that uses Kate Beckinsale’s experience leading films like Underworld as she kicks and shoots her way through a video game-esque complex of hallways and staircases. It is a competently shot action scene that does not build much energy or excitement as the bodies drop and the blood pools. From there, Graves heads back home to Croatia, a setting not commonly used for top-tier spy homebases. Graves reunites with her husband, David (Rupert Friend), just in time to celebrate their anniversary. David is philanthropic and the opposite of Avery in many ways.
Avery heads to work, where she is greeted by her British boss, Jarvis Hedlund (Ray Stevenson), who is American even though the actor was British. Yeah, this is that kind of movie. Speaking in code, Graves and Hedlund head to their secure inner office, which is a clandestine CIA base. The retrieved device is part of a broader mission to track a terrorist known as Kali, who appears to be escalating. As Avery ponders her next move, David is kidnapped by terrorists who blackmail her into accessing a file known as Canary Black in exchange for her husband’s life. Avery barely thinks twice before she does as she is told and tries to find the file, the setting of the film’s main plot, which sends her on task after task to find the Canary Black file while Jarvis has to hunt her down. Along the way, Director Nathan Evans (Ben Miles) and Agent Maxfield (Jaz Hutchins) join the search as they know the close relationship between Avery and Jarvis has likely compromised his objectivity.
What starts out like a play on a Mission: Impossible plot gradually turns into a full-blown, over-the-top James Bond-style villain story. I never expected this movie to be grounded or feature any semblance of realistic espionage action. Still, the narrative meanders between generic double-life tropes as Avery tries to balance her work and professional worlds with an apocalyptic weapon controlled by a turtleneck-clad villain wearing a Spirit Halloween mask as he asks for Dr. Evil-level ransoms from a global summit. Yeah, Canary Black shares more in common with the plot of Austin Powers than any serious spy movie. By the time the third act twist comes around, you will already be so baffled by the decisions made in this film that it will not surprise you in the least. Some may find that entertaining, but combining overly familiar plot devices with out-of-left-field shifts in tone is more aggravating than enjoyable.
Written by Matthew Kennedy, the scribe of the upcoming Frank Grillo horror film Werewolves, and the Lily Collins and Simon Pegg thriller Inheritance, Canary Black has every conceivable genre cliche. Director Pierre Morel, who has made a career out of European-centric action flicks like Taken and Peppermint, does not even raise the temperature of the action to a point where anyone in the film boasts energy appropriate for the material. The limited scale of this European production delivers a cool yet brief sequence involving Kate Beckinsale hanging from a drone in midair. Still, beyond that, the production is relegated to dark rooms and basements that all look the same after a while. It also doesn’t help that Beckinsale has to spout some truly horrid dialogue that is meant to sound like quippy banter but comes across as wooden and artificial, further giving Canary Black the feel of a cheaper production masked by a famous lead.
Committing the ultimate sin of being forgettable, Canary Black is too inoffensive to even distinguish itself from every other movie available at the press of a button. Kate Beckinsale still has the chops to handle a lead role in an action movie, but she deserves better than this. Pierre Morel, as a director, has no opportunity to put any sort of a stamp on Canary Black, which leaves the movie looking bland. Do yourself a favor and skip this one unless you are looking for a movie that reuses the same insult of calling a strong female protagonist a bitch over and over again as she tries to save the world.
Canary Black is now streaming on Prime Video.