Shadow Force

Former covert assassins on the run, fighting to eliminate those who won't let them live in peace.

I'm all in for a group of villainous assassins, and professional mercs! But here, most of these characters don't even have personalities.. much less memorable quirks. The leads work for their respective roles, but aren't particularly charismatic. I do think there's just too much French (for some reason), and the developments aren't particularly exciting. Nothing jumps out, nor stays with you.

Still, the film is quite competent, and a well acted and executed story of elements already done in the past.. a lot. This time, there's a child involved in the mix.

Kind of hard to recommend, knowing how average it is.

Director Joe Carnahan opts for an action thriller that seeks to find its own path, which ends up being a much more serious film than it should be and becomes a very uncharismatic film, despite the good attempts of the cast to float everything.

The survival of this family of mercenaries has some good moments that largely keep the film afloat. However, we're left with a rather glaring lack of action, replaced by drama that's far more overused than the story really needed. Leading duo Kerry Washington and Omar Sy do a great job at this point, giving their all to their characters, and we as viewers can feel for them.

Then we have a group of supporting characters who have their moments, but don't really stand out. The same goes for the villain of the film, who, while he has his moments, doesn't feel as rounded as one would like.

The reality is that we're faced with a film that doesn't offer much new, and with that, we don't find anything that makes it stand out from other similar films. It has a cast that's engaged, but it's completely wasted. It has a story that didn't need to be so serious when it came to presenting us with the emotional depths of its protagonists, and in the end, we're left with a film that works as a momentary diversion. For those who enjoy this style of film, for those looking for something much more revolutionary, the truth is that Shadow Force falls far short of all that.

This movie has a good premise, a very good and capable cast, and even had a decent script. However, the directing was absolutely terrible, making many B movies look Oscar-worthy. It took forever to get going. In fact, it was so slow getting going that I nodded off - twice - during the first half hour. A perfect example of a production suffering from a writer who should stick to writing and leave the directing to someone else. Kerry Washington is good and even believable as an action star, with moments of Olivia Pope shining through. Da'vine was a great surprise, too.

My suggestion is wait to watch it when it starts streaming - for free.

I had high hopes for Shadow Force, but it really fell flat. One major issue was the constant switching to French-don't get me wrong, I love the French language, but using it every five minutes felt unnecessary and forced. It disrupted the flow more than it added anything meaningful. The acting was weak across the board, and the storyline felt like an afterthought-disjointed and clearly aimed at viewers who don't care if the plot ever ties together. Occasionally, it even felt like they were trying to sell products rather than tell a story, which made it feel more like an ad than a movie. By the end, I was just waiting for it to be over. Not recommended.

Its bad.

Its really bad I didn't like the actors.

The script was bad.

The directing was bad.

Who in this reality would release this to real theatres. It is not even good enough for online.

Most of the action scenes were off camera until that last one.

It had silly scenes, like Kerry Washington getting in a punching/slug match with 2 people, she is 50 years, while 90% of it was off camera, it was still silly. I can only imagine how bad it looked that they only showed the back of her head for a few minutes of it bouncing around.

Even the opening scene, somehow our unarmed main action star takes out a roomful of people with automatic weapons, because he is just that tough. Well I assume he did because they are all dead, and he walks away but it was all off camera so hard to tell.