It looks like Mr. and Mrs. Smith got an extreme makeover. “How extreme?” you ask. Well, they’re now Black. I didn’t see that coming.
Kyrah (Kerry Washington) and Isaac (Omar Sy) are a hot superspy couple [read: assassins]. They have been laying low for years. Too long, in fact, for mom hasn’t been home enough that her four-year-old child recognizes her.
I think I have to back up. Kyrah and Isaac were once the stars of a semi-legal CIA enforcement group called Shadow Force. Then they fell in love. Awwwwwwww. Shadow don’t play that and forced them out. I feel like that should have been the end of it, no? For some reason, they parted on lethal terms, so super rich Jack Cinder (Mark Strong) and the remainder of the Shadow Force team are out to kill them both.
Jack has even put a $50 M bounty on their deaths. That sounds kinda personal. And what kind of guy has $50 M to toss and doesn’t have peace of mind? I suppose that’s easier to assume when you look at real life. I mean, if you show up at Trump’s inauguration, your life is clearly full of hate and enemies. Why else would you show up, huh? What? You just like his company, cuz he’s such a good conversationalist? And yet, now we know a handful of assholes who have more money than God but cannot buy self-satisfaction. Must be rough. Wonder how much the billionaires at the Trump show ever paid to have somebody killed.
Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, the film finds Isaac a “victim” during a bank robbery. When his child is threatened in the bank, Isaac reverts to assassin mode and takes all the bad guys out. On camera. Uh oh. Now Jack and his Jills know exactly where to find their pail of water/magic beans/plate-licked-clean, whatever freaking metaphor floats your boat … bottom
line: Jack knows where to find the people he’s been hunting. And father, mother, and kid have to figure out how to survive their own assassination attempts.
I got a bit of that from wiki; I could have used a little more exposition in this film. And I am baffled to know how one couple has pissed off a billionaire to the point that he can’t find rest until he’s murdered them. Geez, man, you’re worth over a billion dollars; find two people that remind you of them and have them killed. Obviously, there’s no accountability for the super rich, so what’s the dif? If that much money can’t buy you happiness, nothing can.
Shadow Force is a weak title for a weak plot. However, Kerry Washington, Omar Sy and the world’s most precocious child (Jahleel Kamara) almost make this film worth it. Hard not to smile when the kid sings along to Lionel Richie’s “Truly” because dad plays it so often that even a four-year-old knows the words. That’s adorable. And we like the leads, kinda, But this film still strikes me as “ethnic Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” There really isn’t much here.
There once was a couple of spies
Who found love in a curious disguise
However, affection
Led to defection
They’ll forever happily provided nobody dies
Rated R, 104 Minutes
Director: Joe Carnahan
Writer: Joe Carnahan, Leon Chills
Genre: Lovespies
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Dynamic couples
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who only buy this scenario when the spies are white
