Set in Zagreb, Croatia, Avery Graves (Kate Beckinsale) is an agent for the CIA unbeknownst to her husband David Brooks (Rupert Friend) who works logistics for Doctors without Borders. When Graves returns home and sees her apartment a mess and finds David missing, she is told by a mysterious voice on the phone that if she wants her husband back alive she will steal a file called "Canary Black". Driven to desperate measures Graves finds herself hunted by her mentor Jarvis Hedlund (Ray Stevenson) and Agent Maxfield (Jaz Hutchins) at the behest of Deputy Director Evans (Ben Miles) and must not only elude her own agency but also the shadowy forces of her husband's kidnappers all while trying to learn what Canary Black actually is.
Canary Black is the latest actioner from Pierre Morel who directs from a script by Matthew Kennedy. Canary Black has all the hallmarks of one of those international action co-productions with a mildly recognizable lead and budget and tax friendly location shooting that's designed for international film sales and festivals and film markets. Premiering on Amazon Prime as one of their originals, Canary Black does work well enough provided you can forgive its usage of a template mined many times before.
With a movie like Canary Black, the biggest stumbling point is inevitably going to be the feeling of "haven't I seen this movie before?" because these kinds of rogue CIA agent on the run movies are a dime a dozen (Aaron Eckhart's done three this year alone with The Bricklayer, Chief of Station, and Classified just a few days ago) not to mention the massive debt most female led assassin films owe to the framework established by Luc Besson's Le Femme Nikita. On occasion you do get something that's more bold or stylish with this concept (such as The Long Kiss Goodnight or Atomic Blonde) but more often than not you're going to get something that rigidly follows the templates of the genre to a "T" only maybe with some attempts at aping the Bourne franchise or paying lip service to a post-Snowden era espionage landscape. Kate Beckinsale is perfectly fine in the role and is more than capable of doing this kind of action role as her work in the Underworld series shows, but there's really nothing to her character that's particularly compelling as the opening half of the movie is basically True Lies only without the humor of the situation (though given Morel's prior attempts at comedy that's probably for the best).
I will say that once we get to the second half the action does become more engaging in contrast to the interchangeable scenes of Graves running through Zagreb by going for larger scale and more outlandish setpieces with one sequence involving Graves' usage of a large drone to infiltrate and then escape a secured facility being quite engaging, and once we get to the climax it does actually feel like there's some good world shattering stakes at play. The movie gets WAY too confident with itself at the end because it actually sets itself up for franchising (with Graves recruited for reasons that are dubious and confusing) and much like The 355 or Heart of Stone I doubt there's going to be much luring audiences or even producers for a second go around.
Canary Black is the definition of serviceable product because that's exactly what it's designed to be: something identifiable without being memorable and meant to be sold and exchanged internationally so it can be used as fodder for streaming services or rental kiosks. There's nothing wrong with it, but there's not much that makes it stand out from scores of similar films.
