When a now-defunct celebrity couple attempted to make like Nick and Nora Charles meets “Mission: Impossible” in “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” two decades ago, the high-concept, high-budget results were a mixed bag — which didn’t stop them from being imitated ever since. The latest duo to step into similar matching marital bulletproof vests is Kerry Washington and Omar Sy, playing globetrotting “elite special operators” now hiding from their former colleagues in “Shadow Force.”
It takes a certain esprit to pull off this kind of bombastic yet larky star vehicle. Joe Carnahan’s film provides passable diversion for a couple hours, but the fun to be had is limited by uninspired action staging, less-than-sparkling dialogue and a maudlin streak of the “It’s about family!!” type. Lionsgate’s theatrical release looks likelier to find its primary audience once it reaches home formats.
Kyrah (Washington) and Isaac (Sy) are a couple who met on the job. They were both part of the titular top-secret assassin unit assembled by then-CIA chief Jack Cinder (Mark Strong) to take out bad guys around the world. But falling in love was against the rules, going AWOL even more so. Some time later, they’ve gone underground, trying to keep themselves and 5-year-old son Ky (Jahleel Kamara) safe from the vengeance of their ex-boss, who is now General Secretary for G7. Cinder’s international career ascent has only made him more anxious to snuff his runaway agents, who “know too many things.” Plus there’s his lingering pique over being dumped for Isaac by Kyrah, with whom he once had a different sort of “thing.”
She has actually spent the last few years away from her husband and child, trying to kill off remaining Shadow Force recruits before they can do the same to her loved ones. However, when Isaac is forced to demonstrate his violent skillset during a bank robbery in which father and son find themselves caught, the resulting heroic surveillance camera footage blows everyone’s cover. Dad and son scram to a hiding place in the Colombian jungle, soon joined by an irate mom. (It is typical of the script’s weak logic that she blames Isaac for attracting attention, ignoring the minor detail that he was forced to save their child from armed goons.)
Once these parents have yelled at and pummeled each other a bit, the family reunion goes on the run, soon crossing paths with old CIA allies: another couple, known as Auntie (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and Unc (Method Man). Less luckily, they’re also tracked down by members of the Force, who drag all the good guys to Cinder’s man-made-island lair.
The shootout that takes place there is decent enough. Still, “Shadow Force” aspires to “John Wick”-ish levels of hyperbolic action without having the elevated fight choreography or visual panache to pull that off. Shot almost entirely in Colombia, the film’s locations and P. Erik Carlson’s production design are plusses that Juan Miguel Azpiroz’s widescreen cinematography doesn’t fully exploit, providing neither grittiness nor high style to material that could use one or the other. A chase on mountain roads, then another between speed boats, ought to provide more visceral thrills than is managed here.
In character terms, too, the movie keeps falling short. The five reassembled “Force” killers (Yoson An, Sala Baker, Marvin Jones III, Natalia Reyes, Jenel Stevens-Thompson) are each given a distinguishing look, but practically nothing to say or do. By default, more interest is stirred by Cinder’s ill-treated bodyguards-slash-assistants (Marshall Cook, Ed Quinn), who at least hint at some droll camaraderie. It’s gratifying when late in the game, they turn out to have more going on than we’d thought. But Strong, who’s played many villains, finds so little of interest in this one that he might as well have “Generic Baddie” (or perhaps “If I can’t have you no one will”) tattooed across his forehead.
While Sy and Washington are certainly accomplished, personable and attractive performers, these ostensibly showy roles don’t do a lot for them, either. He (in a part originally intended for producer Sterling K. Brown) at least imbues his with some humor and warmth. She waxes too earnest for the fairly preposterous premise to bear, hard-selling Kyrah’s tough side one minute, belaboring maternal devotion the next; her prickliness around Isaac makes whatever mutual chemistry brought them together hard to detect. It might’ve been entertaining to let her character’s alpha air be the secret sauce in their marriage, but neither script nor star are willing to make that leap. The dynamic between Randolph and Method Man actually does go there, after a fashion — yet again, Leon Chills and Carnahan’s screenplay never quite gives these actors the opportunity to shine as we keep expecting them to.
A bullet-riddled scenario this simplistic and improbable can’t afford to be as sentimental as “Shadow Force” often gets. There’s too much screentime handed over to child thespian Kamara being precociously adorable — which he is. But charm is dampened by the rote calculation of having a tyke curse for laughs, or hammily sing along to old R&B hits. A running gag here is that wee Ky is a superfan for 80s slow-jam king Lionel Ritchie. Like so much else here, that plays out as an obvious gimmick deployed minus the wit or surprise that might’ve made it fly.
If only Sy and Washington had been given some latterday equivalent to the banter William Powell and Myrna Loy got in those “Thin Man” movies. Instead, the best the filmmakers can manage is saddling them with the same exact fadeout that ended “After the Thin Man” on a note of shameless schmaltz almost 90 years ago.