If you squint at “Canary Black” from the comfort of your own living room—martini glass in hand, perhaps just a little self-consciously nostalgic for the days when spies sparkled and plots had pulse—it might almost pass for a movie. But move in closer, and it’s not so much a cinematic vessel as a soggy, deflating float at the tail end of a parade nobody bothered to attend. What drifts our way, bobbing with all the vigor of a limp flag at half-mast, is the kind of leftover, just-add-water espionage pulp that’s been through every possible recycling bin in Hollywood’s backlot. How many screenwriters were left, we wonder, dangling in the subzero editing bay, before someone finally called it “done”? Deep beneath the chilled surface, “Canary Black” is home to a whole hothouse of misjudged directorial flora: plotting with the finesse of errant GPS, fight scenes borrowed (badly) from late-night aerobics reruns, and a costume budget that feels stitched together entirely from off-season Halloween aisle clearance. Yet here stands Kate Beckinsale, the plucky center of the swirling mediocrity, determined to wear her “notice me, I’m lethal” energy like a badge and a bludgeon.
Now, I’ve always had a weakness—masochistic as it is—for a good spy yarn, for the sense that you, too, could be whisked out of gravity by the mere suggestion of car chases and cryptic code words and the sweet, nervous clatter of a silencer being assembled in a hotel bathroom. Instead, “Canary Black” brings us the endorphin rush of déjà vu so acute I half-suspected I was watching “24” fan fiction on a streaming service so anonymous it doesn’t exist. High-stakes espionage collapses here into a flavorless slop of recycled stunts—nowadays the “doomsday virus” is apparently catalogued with vampire teeth and rubber daggers—and wardrobe left behind from a “sexy assassin” trunk show hosted by Spirit Halloween.
Beckinsale gives us Avery Graves, a CIA ace whose emotional life could generously be described as “microwaved oatmeal with a touch of Lon Chaney.” Her idea of covert ops, apparently, is to clatter through airports and rooftop escapes in boots so stilted you suspect the director’s unspoken vow was to deliver the first action film scored entirely by various types of synthetic leather creaking. I’m convinced somewhere in the world a fallen arch occurs every time Beckinsale “sprints” toward the next plot contrivance. And yet, our girl soldiers on! She’s game, in the way a trooper is game when told the next parachute may or may not open, and every leap from a car hood feels one misstep away from full Abbott & Costello slapstick.
Watching those action set-pieces begin to smolder (and not in a good way) offers the perverse thrill of seeing a flamingo enter a WWE ring—majestic, yes, but you keep bracing to see if the ankles shatter. Physics here is not so much suspended as indicted, cuffed, and frog-marched offscreen. When Avery’s not engaged in hand-to-hand combat with basic velocity, she’s locked in a grim pas de deux with line readings so abrupt I wondered if the teleprompter operator had simply nodded off.
Meanwhile, poor Rupert Friend—once the smoldering soul of “Homeland”—drifts by like a distant weather report. We’re told he matters, but he barely registers, teleported in and then vaporized before the film has any chance to use him for anything but wallpaper. To say he’s wasted is to imply he was ever more than an extra with a few contractual lines.
As for that finale—oh, it’s a marvel of modern cinema, by which I mean you could roast a coffee, write a novel, and return to find nothing has changed. The last plot twists are so listless you suspect the script pages were penned on store-brand tissue. “Canary Black” ends not with a bang but a sigh—the kind you make after realizing the evening is gone, and so are your standards.
And now the ultimate threat: talk of a sequel. The movie fumbles around with the greasy optimism of every failed franchise launch, and I can think of no happier fate than to let “Canary Black 2: Still Limber” remain in the deepest shadows of development hell. If you’re the one brave soul considering another trip to the theater, know you do so in service of science; someone has to prove conclusively that watching action movies can be a somnambulist’s paradise.
In the cold post-mortem, all I can offer “Canary Black” is this: it is the film equivalent of unpopped popcorn, the cinematic hangover that only stings when you realize there were—briefly—better ways to spend that hour and a half. Beckinsale’s old “Underworld” boots have more narrative drive. As self-care, skip the show and take an extra nap; your body, and your ankles, will thank you.
So, to action junkies, double-agent devotees, lovers of actual plot and anatomy-defying roundhouse kicks: skip this. Let “Canary Black” be the stray step you didn’t take. Sometimes the best thing a movie can do is remind us, gently and in bad shoes, that the couch is always there for us—lights out, mind at peace, ankles unbruised.
