Streamers like Amazon refuse to use stars like Kate Beckinsale to their fullest potential. Canary Black is yet another in a long line of somewhat identical straight-to-streaming offerings that rely entirely on their lead’s star power. I will commend Amazon for branching out slightly further than its competition. At least Canary Black isn’t Amazon’s answer to Red Notice, but it’s still comparable to something like The Gray Man.
Canary Black Isn’t Kate Beckinsale’s Best, But It’s Good Enough For Amazon’s Top Ten
No, Canary Black doesn’t have anything to do with the DC Comics character Black Canary. Instead, it follows Beckinsale as a skilled CIA agent called Avery Graves. Her silly name is the first of many hilarious aspects of this film. What we have here is a straightforward spy movie with all of the usual trappings. I mentioned The Gray Man earlier, but Canary Black is eerily similar to Netflix’s Heart of Stone. Its villain has a comparably absurd motivation and eventual plan. The antagonist of Canary Black, Ant-Man and the Wasp and Taken star Goran Kostić, intends to shut down the internet and cause a stock market crash. His requested ransom payment is 1% of the GDP of every nation on Earth. That’s around $1 trillion, but at least he thought of a relatively equitable way to extract the most money any one human has ever laid claim to.
Canary Black dropped limply onto Amazon Prime Video in October 2024. The film didn’t really draw a lot of attention from any particular group. At the time of writing, it only had 11 critics’ reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and only 100 amateurs saw fit to weigh in. Those that did find something to say were unkind, offering grim 18% and 30% positive ratings, respectively. I’d like to say that this is a low point for director Pierre Morel, but it’s par for the course. It holds whatever the opposite of a bronze medal is as his third worst-reviewed film. His masterpiece was District B13, a truly breathtaking action blockbuster that someone remade into Brick Mansions. Morel made Taken, one of the seminal works in this stunt-cast action thriller genre. His worst-reviewed film is last year’s Freelance, a living monument to the dull pointlessness of the genre in its current state.
By reaching Amazon Prime’s top ten, Canary Black is doing its job. The film came out in October, but it has ultimately landed in 23rd place on the streamer’s yearly list. Kate Beckinsale’s face on the poster is truly the only selling point. This is filler that Amazon created to ensure audiences could blindly click on a familiar name and hope for the best. Years ago, it would go straight to TNT and live in reruns every other weekend. At least we all have the freedom to start and stop it at will now.
