Shadow Force

The latest from writer/director Joe Carnahan is a mostly forgettable throwaway action flick featuring Kerry Washington and Omar Sy as former black-ops who come back together to protect their young son (Jahleel Kamara) and kill their former boss (Mark Strong) who has raised the bounty on their heads after a situation in a bank alerts him to their present. The rest of the cast includes the pair's former co-workers (Marvin Jones III, Yoson An, Natalia Reyes, Jénel Stevens, and Sala Baker) now hunting them and other agents whose loyalties are more circumspect (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Method Man, Marshall Cook, and Ed Quinn).

While less tongue-in-cheek and grittier than something like Back in Action, Shadow Force is no less formulaic. You can tell everyone was impressed with young Jahleel Kamara as the script makes a concerted effort to get him scenes with both of his parents which class quite awkwardly with the rest of the film.

As for the stunts and kills, the sequences are effective enough for a throwaway action flick at least until the climax when things get quite hurried and slapped together between our heroes and the remaining bad guys likely in an attempt to force some frantic pace the script hasn't provided and try and hide obvious stunt stand-ins used for the close-fighting sequences.

Shadow Force is B-movie blasé in ways that would feel more at home on any secondary streaming service than a movie theater. I'll give Carnahan and the film's producers credit in crafting and casting strong black leading roles for both Washington and Sy, who do what they can to try and salvage the script, although more time could certainly have been spent in fleshing out the baddies or working out a plot that's part revenge thriller, part family dramedy, part political corruption (but only when its serviceable to the plot), resulting in a whole bunch of scenes that work better on their own than when edited together.

Watch the trailer

• Title: Shadow Force
• IMDb: link