Overview
Top level CIA agent 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 survive and help locate the coveted intelligence that the kidnappers want.
Directed by Pierre Morel, who has never really done much to stand out since his debut with District 13 (and, to some generic degree the first Taken film), Canary Black is an action spy-thriller starring Kate Beckinsale as a CIA agent named Avery Graves trying to balance personal life with her secret operative work, but the two get intertwined when she comes into possession of a top secret drive with sensitive information, and finds her and her husband targetted by not only those who seek to access the drive, but also the agency itself as Avery is suspected to be a double agent. If all this sounds a tad familiar, it’s probably because we’ve all watched the Mission Impossible films.
Morel, who has demonstrated some impressive action direction in previous years, seems to be phoning in his work her, and whilst some set-pieces are well framed and stylised, there never feels to be any impact to them, nor peril. Beckinsale holds her own well, but maybe too well to such a degree that the lack of injury, scar, or scratch that she gets through the array of beatdowns becomes a tad unbelievable. All peril is diminished when it seems that every action piece (and there are many) is simply a tick-box exercise.
Intended to be the start of a new franchise, Canary Black is too bland to make much of an impact, and steals liberally from other, better franchises, to end up being nought but shiny background material whilst you get some household chores done. If you were to order Mission Impossible off Temu, this is what they would deliver.