Kerry Washington appears as Syrah in Shadow Force.Juan Pablo Gutierrez/Lionsgate/Lionsgate
Shadow Force
Directed by Joe Carnahan
Written by Leon Chills and Joe Carnahan
Starring Kerry Washington, Omar Sy and Mark Strong
Classification 14A; 104 minutes
Opens in theatres May 9
If we’re not currently thick in the middle of an action-movie crisis, then we’re certainly hanging on the cliff’s edge of one, a single slip of an index finger away from the entire genre plunging to its rocky, bloody death. Aside from the inexhaustible, unkillable antics of the ever-expanding John Wick cinematic universe – and the occasional punch to the solar plexus courtesy of never-say-die-hard filmmakers like Gareth Evans – audiences have in 2025 been flooded with action fare that is as lifeless as the most anonymous on-screen henchman.
Love Hurts, Back in Action, Novocaine, Flight Risk, G20, The Accountant 2, the latest Captain America, and big chunks of the sometimes respectable A Working Man have each, in their own way, unintentionally reinforced all the hoary talking points of holier-than-thou cinephiles who think action movies are nothing more than toxic kernels of popcorn: shallow, stupid, coarse affairs in blow-‘em-up nothingness.
Every poorly designed, choppily edited and tonally confused action movie is one more chip stacked against a genre that, when steered by artists who know the deep reservoirs of pleasure to be found in creative mayhem, proves the fundamental power of the cinematic medium. A bad action movie isn’t just disappointing – it’s an affront to the reason that so many of us go to the movies.
Which is a not-at-all-hyperbolic way of saying that the new spy thriller Shadow Force deserves to be buried deep inside any random streaming service’s catalogue, never to be unearthed by even the most indifferent and callous what-to-watch-next algorithm. (Shockingly, this title, which has been sitting on Lionsgate’s shelf since its 2022 shoot, is being released in honest-to-goodness theatres, not being punted directly to streaming.)
Somewhat novel in its storyline but utterly dull in execution (and its many, well, executions), Shadow Force follows two allegedly charming black-ops specialists, Kyrah (Kerry Washington) and Isaac (Omar Sy), who have been on the run ever since they fell in love and bore a son (Jahleel Kamara), two big no-nos in the eyes of their CIA-chief superior (Mark Strong). The our-blood-is-thicker-than-your-blood conceit has potential – especially whenever the gentle Sy (best known for his starring turn on Netflix’s Lupin) gets quality screen time with Kamara, most of their dialogue delivered in Sy’s native French – but is quickly invalidated by the film’s uninspired-bordering-on-insulting set pieces.
Nothing in Shadow Force surprises, delights or even attempts to raise your pulse above a twitch. The gunfights, the car chases, the hand-to-hand combat – it’s all choreographed with the energy and inventiveness of an especially dull sloth. By the time that Strong attempts to best Washington and Sy in a speedboat race – one that ends with such a brief thud that you can’t help but think the film’s producers simply didn’t have the funds to finish the sequence – you’ll be in such a deep slumber that it would take a dozen real-life pummels to wake you up.
That the affair is so dull is all the more surprising given director Joe Carnahan’s background. While he’s spent the past few years toning down his severe your-mileage-may-vary style of such earlier intense works as Narc and Smokin’ Aces, up until Shadow Force you could at least count on Carnahan to deliver some kind of in-your-face energy. (Even his mostly inert 2021 thriller Copshop offered the pleasure of pitting the opposable genre forces of Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo against one another.) Here, Carnahan isn’t so much on autopilot as he has completely disengaged, tossing the keys to his non-union robotaxi equivalent.
Shadow Force isn’t exactly the death knell for the genre – in just a few weeks, Tom Cruise is hopefully going to rescue us all with the new Mission: Impossible film, and hopefully someone out there will pick up Michael Bay’s wild new parkour experiment, We Are Storror. But Carnahan’s film is not helping action movies so much as it is hurting them. And in this case, too much pain is no one’s gain.
