Shadow Force Review: A Shadow of Entertainment

Shadow Force has neither enough focus on its heart nor blindly entertaining action to surpass the low bar set by its counterparts in the action blockbuster genre.

Shadow Force. Sounds like a name you’d hear on an action figure commercial. “Save the world tonight with SHADOW FORCE! From Hasbro!”

From the premise, I knew where I had to set my expectations. The story doesn’t boast any deep introspections that the parents have, or examine how a life on the run would affect a child growing up. It would have been cool if Shadow Force had dived into those aspects, but that’s not the impression I got from the trailer, which had a much more action-oriented, fun air. Thus, it seemed like another one of those turn-your-brain-off rides.

Those sort of mindless fun movies don’t bother with heavy themes or layered characters. They instead lay out the baseline requirements to get the audience invested enough in their characters, then put them through a series of fun challenges. It’s the cinematic equivalent to comfort food, and I admit I have a soft spot for them. Taken, Transporter, any Dwayne Johnson movie: these don’t require much engagement from the audience and yet deliver enough dopamine for the evening. Shadow Force looked to be one of those comfort food movies, so I set my expectations relatively low and stepped into the theater.

Yet even comfort food can spoil, as Shadow Force unfortunately fails to cross even that low bar. Both Kerry Washington and Omar Sy give earnest performances, and them having a lovable kid running around with them immediately makes it very hard to not root for them unless your heart is made of marble. You can get invested in the characters enough, but in terms of the actual conflicts they go through, things are very weak.

It doesn’t help that the film brings in a bunch of side characters that give nowhere near the baseline investment the main cast has. They are purely NPC action fodders, minibosses for the family to take down. And many of them exit the story just as lazily as they are introduced, which made me wonder what the point of having so many characters on the antagonist’s side even was.

The way I see it, there were two ways to approach this premise: dramatic or fun. A dramatic approach would have focused on the family’s desperation as they try to escape the organization closing in on them. Escaping by the skin of their teeth and that struggle weighing down on them would have been a great source of tension that would have made the characters’ journey compelling. As it is, the plot is way too simple and over quickly; it feels like the film instantly snaps to its ending only a little after the first act is finished.

The fun route would have been to focus on the action instead. In fact, that’s what I expected. Yet, disappointingly, that is Shadow Force’s weakest aspect. Not only is there a surprising lack of action, but when characters fight, it is littered with quick cuts and shaky cam. They were clearly put in to disguise the poor stunt work from the actors, which was noticeable even for me. It is also very hard to tell the overall geography of the scenes. For instance, a shootout happens in the climax, and it mostly consists of characters shooting vaguely towards the camera without any indication of who their target is or how much they’re succeeding. It fails to lay out a proper progression of the action and thus devolves into grey noise.

Everything in Shadow Force feels like a mere shadow of elements from better action movies. Nothing is overly incompetent but there’s nothing that feels competent either, resulting in an action movie that feels perfunctory. People may write off the “comfort food” type movies as lazy, but this film shows even those types require effort and passion to be, if not memorable, at least entertaining.

Shadow Force is now available to watch globally in theaters.