Hastily stitched – Canary Black movie review

Trying something different this time. I am writing this review as I watch the movie. This is a reaction review vs. me usually writing my thoughts many hours after the viewing. I am curious to see how this pans out. So without further ado – Canary Black review streamed on Amazon Prime.

The movie starts with Avery Graves (played by Kate Beckinsale) jumping off a building to retrieve an object that looks like a thumb drive from a mob boss. (Movies show really odd USB drives or really fancy ones – makes me wonder where they purchase them. Don’t they have regular USB memory sticks anymore?). The fight scene was a little painful to watch – it wasn’t well choreographed and Kate appeared to struggle through it all. Having seen the John Wick franchise, I know stunts can look much much better. In the end, her dropping the wig was just plain silly – in the world of espionage, leaving without a trace, especially one with DNA, is like table stakes.

She gets back to her husband – it is their anniversary. All she got him was a pair of underwear with a Japanese reference. This in itself, didn’t bother me as it just went to show that she grabbed something at the airport due to her dedication to work. The very next scene she is at the CIA station and gifts her boss an expensive watch. She could have bought two at the same time, maybe? This just didn’t make sense to me.

The lead character gets more obnoxious – not very friendly with the neighbors – maybe there is a history here, but without context it just looks like rude. The story progresses to Avery finding her husband being kidnapped and being told to get a file from a prisoner as ransom. The caller is not shown – you get the feeling he is older and is seen in something similar to military fatigues, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the plot twist is going to involve the husband.

Avery goes to the CIA black site to talk to the detainee. She doesn’t find the file and her manhandling of the prisoner alerts other agents who begin to chase her. Her escape seems all to convenient. There is a hanging loose wire to block the door, a huge crate to block the second door. Again, fighting is not her strong point.

Since she trusts her station chief Jarvis Hedland, she reaches out and finds more about Canary Black. The audience also gets a quick background – it is a master file of compromising information about anyone related to the government. In the wrong hands, it can be used to manipulate them for illegal purposes. Avery goes to a safe house to collect cash to make purchases for her mission. Henchmen are waiting to get her and her suitcase is empty. I don’t understand why the villain sends men to kill Avery without her having Canary Black. Isn’t it counter productive to the whole plan? Assuming the henchmen kill Avery, what next? The plot is leaking like a sieve. The only good thing was that the fight in the safe house was much, much better – shorter sequences seem to work in Kate Beckinsale’s favour.

Her contact Henrick supplies her with logistics and tells her to never call again. In an earlier scene, he mentions that Avery will be burning a bridge by meeting him. There is no drama, no attention being drawn to the encounter, yet Henrick’s is upset and angry. Why? As a viewer, I can’t fathom this. On a similar vein, the hacker Avery contacts, Sorina, also ends the call with “Never call me again”. Why all this hostility? I was left scratching my head.

With CIA agents chasing her as well as the henchmen, Avery decides to get the file using the CIA Deputy Director’s credentials. Deputy Director Evans checks into a hotel, only to find himself captured by Avery. As Avery tries to get Evans’ password, he gives her the wrong information till he gets locked out. No one checks on the director during this whole time though there are agents just outside the door. Avery learns that she needs to get to a secure facility to access the file due to its sensitivity. With Sorina’s help, she breaks into PKL Technologies – a defense contractor and is now able to login with Evans’ password? What happened to his account being locked out? The story doesn’t make sense, again.

Avery manages to grab the file and Sorina, an experienced hacker just plugs it in inspite of it prompting “Executing a program”. No program opens up code and displays it on the terminal, I wonder why Canary Black would do that.. especially when it is malicious. Sorina & Avery immediately decipher that it is not a list of information but a program that cripples the internet. Wow, I wish I saw code that had such clear comments and documentation. Also, how did the purpose of Canary Black suddenly change from a list of blackmail worthy information of everyone in a government position to a way to block out internet at a country level. There is no explanation for this other than Deputy Director Evans mentioning it is top secret. Isn’t a list of compromising information on everyone top secret by itself? Sorina just throws in keywords about ISPs, Geofencing and the audience is to be impressed. The switch of Canary Black’s purpose isn’t explained reasonably. They could have started out with this from the beginning and it wouldn’t have changed anything other than making the story more sensible.

It is already revealed that the Director of the Croatian Secret Service Breznov is the mastermind and is looking to hold the various countries at ransom. Conveniently, there is a worldwide summit where Breznov can broadcast his intentions and seek 1% of a country’s GDP to stop them from facing blackouts. Avery gets the file to Breznov and when her husband is released, it is revealed that he is actually Kali – a notorious assassin Avery has been searching for a long time. There is no background on why he becomes an assassin or his aims – this thread is left hanging. For all the initial setup on Kali being the one that got away, Brezner being the antagonist is a big let down.

Of course, Avery breaks all ties with him – it is understandable. He is after all a criminal, and Avery’s secrets are for the greater good. Though without a compelling back story, you don’t really get the gravity of the breakup. I can only think that if the husband was any other assassin than Kali, a patch-up would have happened.

Back to Brezner, he livestreams to the summit and shuts down the internet in Singapore which conveniently switches off the electricity. I have had internet disconnected at home, but the lights were still on. A city wide blackout that follows an internet outage is far fetched. Inspite of getting money from various countries, Breznov orders Canary Black to be used against US and a bunch of other countries. Conveniently, there is a long upload sequence for this, that the demonstration against Singapore didn’t have. Avery gets time to stop this as she fights with cannon fodder and faces off Croatian Director.

Inspite of things ending well, and the crisis being averted, Avery is arrested and Evans throws the rule book at her and she is looking at life in prison. This is a marked deviation from the usual – “Hey! all is forgiven, you didn’t have a choice” attitude of most movies. However, you have to end the movie on a positive note, so cue in a more secretive agency MC6 whose director outranks the CIA and recruits Avery. If this was a way to setup a sequel, it was pretty bad. A better way to end could have been Avery being escorted to prison and her husband Kali attempting a rescue – Fast & Furious style.

The movie being shot in Croatia leads to some nice scenery, but the movie had a horrible plot, poor cast that resulted in a sub-par movie. Skip this movie.

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I wasn't a big fan of doing the review reaction style. I think I ended up being overly critical and viewing everything under a microscope. I also had to pause the movie multiple times to write a long paragraph. Such reviews would be few & far between. I still stand by my poor rating of the movie. I would have felt the same even if I wasn't writing the review as I watched.