My Thoughts on “Shadow Force” (2025)

 

(This is the poster for Shadow Force (2025).)

I’m sorry that this took so long, I had to visit the hospital because I was feeling pain in my left testicle. It’s a pretty minor dull pain, but it is uncomfortable and distracting for me, and I want to return to normal. The doctor had me do ultrasound to look inside my testicle to see if there was anything there, if there were any cysts or fluid, or anything else that shouldn’t be in there that might be causing the pain, but they found nothing. Right now, he thinks that it might be a hernia, but he’s not so sure, and I have to go back for more ultrasounds to see if it is or not. If it is a hernia, hopefully it isn’t too bad, and I don’t have to get surgery. I’ve never had surgery in my life, the closest thing was that I had staples put in my head after I split it open when I was a kid, and I had my wisdom teeth removed, but that’s about it. Right now, as I’m writing this, I’m feeling a little bit better. I don’t feel the pain as much as I did yesterday or the previous four or five days (I started feeling this way on last Friday on October 10, 2025), but that could just be because I’ve been sitting down and I haven’t been doing anything physical. I still want to get it checked, and see what it’s actually causing it and what I can do about it, to make it stop so my balls can start feeling normal again. 

So, that’s one reason why it’s taken me so long to get around to doing this review, the other reason is that I just wasn’t in the mood to watch this movie. I just got lazy, and I didn’t feel like watching this movie or writing a review of it. I just want to sit and watch YouTube videos all day. The issue that I run into when it comes to running this blog is that sometimes it feels like work to me, even though isn’t work, it’s a hobby. It shouldn’t feel like work, but it does. I guess the reason why it does is that I feel this need to have at least one post out every week of every month, just so that I always have something out consistently, so that no one thinks that this is a dead blog. I guess I don’t have to have one out every week, but I do like to have at least four posts by the end of the month. There was a time, two years ago, when I was able to put out 7 posts a month, that was when I was able to crank these out on a more daily basis. But, I can’t do that anymore, even I want to. 

 

Mostly, it’s because my posts take longer to finish, because I have so much to say about a certain topic, especially if it’s a movie review, and I want to include everything so that I don’t lose that thought, and everything I can say about the topic can be said. It’s also why I go back and add more stuff to posts I’ve already written. Because of this, the average post now takes at least 2 or 3 days to finish, even more if I really have a lot to say. I also take breaks in-between writing because it can exhausting writing for hours on end, typing stuff on my phone 📱 because some of the keys on my laptop 💻 don’t work and I can’t type everything that I want to type on there. Sometimes I get hungry, and I can’t think straight when I’m hungry, I don’t always come up with my best ideas when I’m hungry, so I take a break to have something to eat so that I have something in my stomach, and can fuel my body and my mind. Same thing if I’m tired 🫩🥱, I can’t think of anything to write when I’m tired 🫩🥱, I kind of just run out of things to write, and when I do press on and try to force myself to keep writing, I can’t come up with anything good. I usually don’t come up with my best ideas when I’m tired 🫩🥱, and usually I end up having to refine or revise what I wrote the previous night the next day because it didn’t come out right. 

 

I just have to keep telling myself that this isn’t a job, this is a hobby, there are no deadlines, and if I can’t write, if I’m not in the mood to write, then I won’t. I’ll break, and then write whenever I’m ready. And then, when I am writing, and I’m hungry or I’m tired, then I stop, put my phone 📱 down, eat or sleep 😴, and then resume at another time. Even if I only end up writing three posts a month, or only two, then that’s fine, at least I got something out there. I don’t need to churn these out on a daily or weekly basis because I’m not being monetized, I’m not making money 💵 off of this (yet). Besides, I don’t have an audience who would get restless and constantly ask when the next post is going to be, or why is it taking so long. I’m only doing this because it’s fun, because I like doing it, I get to express my opinions and instead of keeping them to myself all time or not posting anywhere online, and it’s something for me to do when I get bored watching YouTube. And luckily for me, and you reading this right now, there isn’t that much good on YouTube right now, so I’m willing to put that aside and work on this review. 

I got this movie on Blu-Ray 💿 a few weeks ago, I’ve had it since last month really, but I’ve just been sitting on it all this time because I want to do Nobody (2021) and Fight or Flight ✈️ first, and I also couldn’t bring myself to sit down and watch it until now. I got it for a steal, it was only $7.50 💵. That’s just amazing, usually the cheapest Blu-Rays 💿 are sold for about $15.00 💵 or $12.00 💵 at the lowest, but no, this one was being sold for $7.50 💵, which is about as much as a DVD 📀 is sold for nowadays. I know the Blu-Ray 💿 for this movie comes with a DVD 📀, but still. It did come with special features which I am glad about. Lionsgate is usually pretty good at putting special features on their physical media releases. The Blu-Rays 💿 for both The Beekeeper 🐝 and Fight or Flight ✈️ didn’t even come with any special features, they just came with the movie, some language and subtitle settings, and that’s it. I got it for dirt cheap, and I’m glad because I finally got to watch it 😁. It’s good, I liked it in case you’re wondering, we can get that part out of the way, and I can start talking about the production, the plot, the characters, the action, and the soundtrack because the soundtrack is an important part of this movie. Now, this movie was directed by Joe Carnahan, who’s a director who’s had quite the career over the past couple of decades. His movies are hit and miss with a lot of people, but I can’t really speak on his other movies since I haven’t seen any of them, even though I am interested in checking out Smokin’ Aces and The A-Team (2010); I at least have The A-Team (2010) added to my list of stuff to review. 

 

He started out small, and went bigger from there, until he’s doing smaller movies again; case in point, this movie. He directed a movie called Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane 🩸, that was his directorial debut, and his first step into the independent movie scene. Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane 🩸 was a very low budget movie. It only cost $15,035 💵 to make, which isn’t a whole lot of money 💵 for a movie, especially in 1998. Joe Carnahan didn’t even have enough money 💵 to pay for any actors, so he ended up starring in the movie himself, along with his friend, Dan Leis, and a guy ♂︎ named Nick Fenske, who’s like the only real actor in the cast. Then, 4 years later, he made Narc, which had a way bigger budget than Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane 🩸, but was still low budget by Hollywood standards. The movie cost $6.5 million 💵 to make, the budget was so low that the actors had to take pay cuts, including Ray Liotta, who was the biggest star in the movie, the most well known actor in the cast. But, he was willing to take a pay cut because he believed in Joe Carnahan’s vision that much, he liked the script that much. And it paid off because the movie was a success, making $12.6 million 💵 at the worldwide box office, and it ended being his big breakout movie. 

 

From there, Joe Carnahan would make more movies with much bigger budgets than what he had on his first two movies, like Smokin’ Aces, which cost $17 million 💵 and had a huge ensemble cast, including Ryan Reynolds, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Common, Andy Garcia, Alicia Keys, Taraji P. Henson, Ray Liotta, Chris Pine, Néstor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, Peter Berg, Martin Henderson, Joel Edgerton, Tommy Flanagan, Matthew Fox, and Jeremy Pivan as Buddy “Aces” Israel, the Aces that the title, Smokin’ Aces refers to. This movie got compared to Quentin Tarantino’s earlier movies from the 1990s like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction especially, because of its use of a huge ensemble cast, and relying more on performances and sharp dialogue as well as extreme violence than a compelling story, while yes, Smokin’ Aces could be seen as Joe Carnahan copying Tarantino’s style, and could be seen as his Pulp Fiction, I think Joe Carnahan has enough of his own style and puts enough of his own spin on it that it isn’t just a carbon copy of Tarantino’s work. Of course, that’s with me not even seeing the movie for myself, and not even really being a fan of Tarantino’s work (outside of the soundtracks), so I don’t know 🤷‍♂️. Smokin’ Aces was actually successful despite its mixed reviews, making $57.3 million 💵 at the worldwide box office, and it actually got a prequel film called Smokin’ Aces 2: Assassins’ Ball, which wasn’t directed by Carnahan, but was written by him. 

 

The success of Smokin’ Aces is what landed him the directing gig that anyone who grew up in the 1980s would’ve dreamed of, The A-Team (2010), based off the old 1980s TV show of the same name. It had the biggest budget that Joe Carnahan had ever worked with up until that point and has worked with since, at around $100 million-$110 million 💵, had a decent cast with some big name actors like Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Sharlto Copley, and Patrick Wilson, with Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper being the two biggest names in the cast (at the time), and it was to be a summer blockbuster ☀️ based on a property that a lot of people grew up with and were attached to. However, unlike his previous two movies, Narc and Smokin’ Aces, The A-Team (2010) was not a success. It not only got mixed reviews, just like Smokin’ Aces did, but it also underperformed badly, making only $177.2 million 💵 at the worldwide box office against its $100 million-$110 million budget 💵. There were actually plans to make a sequel to this movie, but after the box office results came in, and they weren’t very good, they decided to scrap it. So, we never got another A-Team movie after this, not a sequel or even a reboot with another cast. 

 

But, this little box office failure didn’t impact Joe Carnahan’s career too much, as he got to direct a few more movies after this. He got to reunite with Liam Neeson, for their second collaboration together, to make the 2011 survival thriller, The Grey 🐺, which was the “Liam Neeson wolf movie 🐺” that might’ve have heard people talk about back then. It had a smaller budget than The A-Team (2010), at around $25 million 💵, but it was arguably a bigger success proportionally, at around $81.2 million 💵. Then he made Stretch, which was a direct-to-video movie (released on DVD 📀 and Blu-Ray 💿), he made Boss Level, which was his big return to directing after he spent 2 years writing and/or producing. It was released straight-to-streaming as this was still the pandemic era 🦠😷, in 2021, and it received decent reviews, but not great reviews; though it did make Rotten Tomatoes’ 🍅 list of the Best Science Fiction Movies of 2021. He directed Copshop, also in 2021, and unlike Boss Level, it actually got a theatrical release. But, like Boss Level, it did get positive reviews. And that finally brings us to his latest movie at the time of me writing this, Shadow Force (2025). A movie that hardly anyone saw or talked about when it came out.

The movie begins with a quote: 

 

“Our most basic instinct is not for survival, but for family”

 

— Paul Pearsall 

 

I don’t know if that’s a real quote or not, but it is a cool way to start the film and show that it will be family focused. Even though the film itself is not a family film, it is an R rated film for adults. It’s just that the subject matter of the film is about family. Kind of like Fast & Furious, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Incredibles (and also The Incredibles 2 🙄), and probably the most relevant to this discussion, Spy Kids, The X’s, and The Secret Saturdays. Most of those are actually family friendly, but the point is that the center focus is on family, despite it having some fantasy or sci-fi elements mixed in. Spy Kids and The X’s are actually about spies (if the name Spy Kids wasn’t any indicator), but another spy show that is about family but is more for adults is Spy × Family (if the name wasn’t any indicator), I’ve never watched that show, nor have I read the manga it’s based, but is a show that is really popular (or used to be really popular), and it does have a similar premise as this movie where it’s about a couple of spies who are a married couple and they’re trying to raise a kid (an only child), who is at first unaware that they’re spies until they get wrapped up in their spy adventures unwittingly. It makes you wonder if the people who made this got the idea to do a spy story about a married spy couple who have a kid together, and their kid gets wrapped up in their spy adventure, and the kid learns their secret that they were spies the whole time from Spy × Family.

But, I would say that the movie is more similar to Spy Kids than it is to Spy × Family; particularly the first Spy Kids movie. That was my first thought when I first saw the trailer to this movie, “This is like Spy Kids if it focused more on the parents than the kids. If it was more from the parents’ perspective rather than the kids’ perspective. And also if it was rated R and not rated PG.” Because it sort has the same plot or same premise, or at the very least, the same setup where it’s this married couple, they used to be spies, but they’re sort of retired and they have a kid, and they’re trying to live a normal life. But, something forces them out of retirement, and they end up going on another mission (for old time’s sake), it goes wrong, and their kid ends up getting wrapped up in the adventure, and it ends up bringing them closer together as a family. Not only that, but the two spies and their kid are people of color, rather than being white. So there are at least surface level similarities between this movie and Spy Kids, as well as Spy × Family, though again, I haven’t seen that show nor have I read the manga it’s based on. The differences are in the details, the devil’s in the details as they always say, and there are a lot of differences that this apart from either of those two properties (that movie and that show). 

For one thing, to get the obvious out of the way, it’s a black family in this rather than a Latino family like in Spy Kids, and they only have one kid ☝️ in this rather than two ✌️ like Cortezes did in Spy Kids. The other big difference that goes beyond skin deep, and concerns narrative and characters, is that in this movie, the kid actually knows that his parents are spies. They didn’t even try to keep it a secret from him, they told him straight up that they’re spies, or they were spies at one time, and that they have killed people; granted, they were bad guys, and the parents tell him that they only killed (and kill) bad guys but still. He doesn’t know all the details, but he does at least know the basics of what his parents do, so when the action does start, the villains come after them, he isn’t shocked at all. Granted, he’s only 5 years old, so he doesn’t fully grasp what’s happening, but he does know that his parents are spies and that this what is they do, and that they’re there to protect him and keep him safe.

 

He trusts his parents, maybe a bit more than he should given that they’re spies and they’ve killed people, but he does trust them with his life and he believes that they have his best interest at heart, and they do, even if they’re not always perfect about it, even if they disagree on how to protect him and keep him safe; and to be fair, they don’t give him a reason to not trust them, except for when they started fighting each other after they reunited over how to protect their child, and he witnesses it but that’s about it; but even then, his trust in his parents is never broken and he loves them just the same 😊. This kid has been pretty desensitized to a lot of stuff, especially by the end of this movie. They try to shield him from some of this stuff, they try to shield him from the violence, like they cover his eyes, or tell him to go behind a corner, or they take him somewhere else, but he still sees it, he still sees what’s happening, even if he doesn’t fully understand it. And of course, he hears them cursing, and picks them, and says those words out loud, and those moments are played for laughs and are where a lot of the humor comes from even if this isn’t a comedy straight out. 

 

That is something that I appreciate about this movie. I like that the parents didn’t keep it a secret, and that their kid knows what they do. Most other movies like this, would have the parents lie to their child, to try to keep it a secret, and then something happens, and the secret gets out and the kid find out anyway, only they’re now upset at their parents for keeping secrets from them or lying to them. It’s not a thing in Spy Kids, or in Spy × Family potentially, but it’s also a thing in True Lies, the James Cameron spy movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which was a remake of a French movie 🇫🇷 called La Totale!. It even says it in the title, True Lies, it’s about a guy ♂︎ who lies to his family about being a spy. He tells him that he’s a computer hardware salesman, when really he’s a spy working for a government agency called Omega Sector. He’s essentially living a double life, until his spy life gets in the way of his normal domestic life, and his family is put in danger by the bad guy, and the cat’s out of the bag, they find out he’s a spy anyway; all that work he did to keep it a secret was for nothing. But, this movie doesn’t do that, and I appreciate it for that, it helps it stand out from the rest. 

Another thing that sets this movie apart is that the parents aren’t actually retired technically. Yeah sure, they don’t work for the government anymore, they defected, and are essentially fugitives on the run now, but they’re still working as spies, or hitmen I guess. People who worked on this film alternated between calling them spies, hitmen, assassins, and special operators in the behind-the-scenes material in the special features. Technically, they’re former special operators working for a a clandestine CIA blacks op unit called Shadow Force (hence why the movie’s called Shadow Force), but for the sake of this review, I will be referring to them as spies for the remainder of this review. Jake Tapper makes a cameo in the movie as himself, doing (what else?) a CNN report, and even he says that they’re spies, but not in a “James Bond kind of way.” But, I will include the “assassins” tag in the tags underneath this review, as well as the “spy movies” tag. Basically, the parents, Kyrah Owens (Kerry Washington) and Isaac Sarr (Omar Sy) were the leaders of Shadow Force, a multinational special forces unit operating under the CIA, under the direction of Jack Cinder (Mark Strong). They essentially carried out assassinations on behalf of the US government 🇺🇸, that’s why they’re as much assassins as they are spies, and why you can use those two terms, as well as special operators, interchangeably to refer to them. 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA for short.)

 

 

 

 

However, Kyrah and Isaac fell in love ❤️ with each other, I mean how could they not? They’re both very attractive people, and in the case of Isaac, he’s French 🇫🇷, and has a French accent 🇫🇷, and while a lot of people today like to clown on the French 🇫🇷 🤡 (and for a lot of understandable and justified reasons), women ♀︎ still find French accents 🇫🇷 sexy, they still find French men 🇫🇷♂︎ to be sexy, and Isaac is one sexy man ♂︎. Kyrah gets pregnant 🤰🏽with Isaac’s child, and they decide to leave the force, and go underground so that they start a family together, and so their kid can grow up in a safe and normal environment. But, Cinder doesn’t like that, not just because he feels that they betrayed the team, and turned their backs on them, but also because Cinder had feelings for Kyrah, and is upset that Isaac took her from him, and that they had a son together. So, he vows revenge against them, and he uses his new position as the Secretary General of the G7 (yes, that G7), after leaving the CIA, to go after them and kill them, including their son, Ky (Jahleel Kamara); Kyrah just took her name, removed the “rah” part, and created a boy name ♂︎ out of it, Ky. 

 

Of course, he isn’t just trying to kill Kyrah, Isaac, and Ky because he’s jealous of Isaac and is resentful towards Kyrah for rejecting him, but because his career at the CIA, and the conduct of Shadow Force under his leadership comes under scrutiny by the United States’ Inspector General’s Office 🇺🇸 (OIG), and he wants to keep any dirt they may have on him from getting out to protect his own career now that he’s the Secretary General of G7. Which BTW, I looked into it, and that’s not a thing. The G7 doesn’t have a Secretary General, in fact, it doesn’t have a permanent administrative structure at all, it’s whoever’s hosting the summit that year essentially; it’s the leader of whichever country is hosting the summit. They could’ve easily have just made him the Secretary General of NATO, and it would’ve made just as much sense, if not more sense since NATO actually does have a Secretary General, and it is something that a guy ♂︎ from the CIA like Cinder could ascend to; since it is a defensive alliance, and it’s main concern is defense and the national security of each of the member states. If I were writing this movie, or if I was asked to do some rewrites as a script doctor or something, I would’ve changed it to NATO rather than the G7 to have it fit the real world a little bit better, and to be more accurate and not give people the wrong idea. 

 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO for short.)

 

 

 

 

Kyrah and Isaac get married, but they split up at some point after Ky is born, and Kyrah goes off to take care of the other Shadow Force members, who are called Shadows and all have codenames that are the word “shadow” in different languages (even Kyrah and Isaac had their own code names, “Ombra” and “Sombra” respectively), while Isaac stays behind in France 🇫🇷 and takes care of Ky, giving him as much of a normal as he possibly can, far away from the clandestine world of espionage and assassinations. So, even if they’re not working for the government, they’re still working as spies, or at least, Kyrah is. Isaac pretty much assumes the role as a single dad (even if he and Kyrah are technically married), and while he softens and kind of loses some of his skills, Kyrah is still out there killing people, taking out the other Shadows, and her skills are as sharp as ever. One day, while visiting the bank with Ky, Isaac is forced to shake off the rust, and use his skills again to take down some bank robbers trying to rob the place, blowing his cover in the process. Cinder quickly finds out where Isaac and Ky are, and then uses whatever resources and connections he still has in the government to go after them. He gets the band back together, reassembles what’s left of the Shadow Force team (the ones that Kyrah hasn’t killed yet), and orders them to kill Kyrah, Isaac, and Ky; enticing them with a pretty much huge bounty 🤑. So, Isaac takes Ky to a secret hideout in Colombia 🇨🇴, and him and Kyrah must reunite to protect their boy ♂︎ from Cinder and the other Shadows; and along the way, rekindle their relationship with each other after they’ve been separated from each other for so long (for about 5 years in fact), and have formed resentments towards each other as a result. 

But, they aren’t alone, since while most of the Shadows are after them to go after the bounty that Cinder placed on them, they do got some allies on the inside, in form of Marvella AKA “Auntie” (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who is Kyrah’s older sister and a high ranking CIA official, and Avery AKA “Unc” (Method Man) who is Auntie’s husband. They’re kind of the comic relief of the film, as they spend most of their screen time bickering at each other like an old married couple, but they do eventually participate in the action and get a chance to kick some ass. However, while Kyrah, Isaac, and Ky are in the hideout in the Colombian jungle 🇨🇴, someone tips off Cinder and the other Shadows and give away their location, forcing them to flee from the hideout, and head to Cartagena. So, at least one of the two, Auntie and Unc, is not to be trusted, and Isaac doesn’t trust them and is suspicious of them 🤨 when he and Ky meet up with them in Bogotá. 

 

When that happened in the film, I just knew that there was going to a plot twist at some point, they telegraphed that pretty hard. I just didn’t know what that plot twist would be. I thought that it was either going to be that Auntie and Unc were the traitors and that they had sold them out to Cinder and the other Shadows, or it was going to be that Kyrah was the one who gave away their location so that she can get close to Cinder and kill him, or even that she was a bad guy the whole time and she was planning on betraying Isaac and Ky to go work for Cinder again; I wouldn’t put it past a movie like this; it’s the kind of twist that Matthew Vaughn would probably do in one of his movies. But no, it turns out that only Unc was the traitor, and Auntie was completely clean. They all converge on this private island owned by Cinder off the coast of Cartagena, and that’s where the majority of climax of the movie takes place. There is a boat chase through a river and a Mangrove swamp, but the majority of the climax is on this private island. 

It did kind of remind me of the end of True Romance. I haven’t seen that movie, but I have clips from the ending part, and I’ve watched reaction videos of the whole movie on YouTube. So, I know about the ending in great detail, where all the major characters converge in one location (a hotel room in the case of that movie), and they have a bit of a Mexican standoff 🇲🇽 with each other, with everyone pointing their guns at each other, telling each other to lower their weapons, and the tension just builds and builds until something gives a way and a massive shootout with each of the characters (except the two leads) killing each other, until they’re all dead and the only ones left are the two leads. Enemy of the State, another Tony Scott movie, had a similar ending as well; where the main character tricks the villain into thinking that this mobster guy, who was once one of his clients (because Will Smith’s character’s a lawyer in that film), has this tape that has incriminating evidence on it in his possession; and they end up having a huge shootout in the mobster’s restaurant that ends with all of them dying except the main character (Will Smith’s character). I believe Carnahan’s own prior film, Smokin’ Aces had a similar ending to this as well, where the characters all converge in one location, they have a standoff, the tension builds and builds, and then something gives way, and they are all start shooting each other and killing each other until almost everyone’s dead except the main characters. But I still think it’s cool when it happens here. 

 

I do like the action in this movie, I think most of the action is well done in this movie. I mean, this is an action movie, I watched this mainly for the action, so I’m glad that the action was done well here. The only action scenes I wasn’t that crazy about was the bank fight, but that’s only because we don’t actually see it. Most of it happens off screen, which was kind of disappointing because it was first fight scene that Isaac is involved in, and this would’ve been a perfect opportunity for the movie to show off his skills as a spy, to show what he can do before the plot really kicks into high gear, and they embark on their globe-trotting adventure. I also didn’t care for that scene Cinder beats up his own goons, which I suppose isn’t really an action scene, but there is fighting going on that scene, and it did kind of bother me, but I’ll talk a little bit about that later. 

 

But, all the other action scenes are pretty fantastic. Well shot and well edited too, like you can see what’s happening at all times, which is in stark contrast to the action scenes in The A-Team (2010), which were chaotically shot and edited, with a lot of quick cuts and shaky cam. Carnahan adapts with the times, or he adopts whatever style is popular at the time, and shaky cam fight scenes like you saw in the Bourne movies is no longer popular. Now fight scenes where you can see what’s going on like in the John Wick movies are what’s popular now. It is important to note that this whole movie was shot in Colombia 🇨🇴. They talked about this in the behind-the-scenes material in the special features, every scene, even the ones not set in Colombia 🇨🇴, were shot somewhere in the country. And to their credit, you really can’t tell, they managed to make each scene not set in Colombia 🇨🇴 look different and not give away that it’s in Colombia 🇨🇴. But, when you do get to the part of the movie that is actually set in Colombia 🇨🇴, it feels more authentic because it’s actually in the country itself and not a stand-in. Colombia 🇨🇴 is beautiful, it’s a great location for a movie like this. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of Colombia 🇨🇴.)

 

 

 

 

The cast is pretty good, the standouts are obviously Kerry Washington, Omar Sy, Mark Strong, and Jahleel Kamara, and those are the four who I’m going to talking about the most in the remainder of this review before I start talking about the soundtrack, and whether or not this movie will get a sequel. But rest assured, everyone else in the cast does a good job, especially Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who plays Auntie. She was a stand out to be sure, even if she is mostly relegated to being the comedic relief, along with Method Man. She does get to a little bit of ass, but no where near as much Kerry Washington, Omar Sy, Mark Strong, or any of the other actors playing the Shadows. I do appreciate that despite her mostly being a comedic character, they didn’t try to do any fat jokes with her, and that they let her come out of this with her dignity intact; even though her character’s husband betrayed her in order to make a quick buck 🤑. I doubt she would’ve even taken the role at all if there were any fat jokes in the script, and if there were, she probably made them remove them or else she wouldn’t do the movie. I haven’t really seen her in anything besides this. She was in the show, The Idol from 2023, which was created by the same guy ♂︎ who created Euphoria, Sam Levinson, and infamously starred the Weeknd, who was one of the worst aspects of that show, among many, and that’s really the only thing I know her from; I had to go on Wikipedia to make sure that it was her, that it was the same actress from The Idol; I didn’t want to assume, and risk seeming racist for assuming that it’s the same black woman ♀︎ when it isn’t, I didn’t want anyone to think that I think all black people look alike because I don’t ; but luckily it was, it was the same actress from The Idol 😁. But I remember people saying that she was one of the better aspects of the show, not just her character, but her performance as that character. 

 

I never watched The Idol because everything I heard about it was bad, everyone was saying it was one of the worst shows ever made, it was one of the worst shows of the decade at the very least, and that it was a major step down from Sam Levinson’s previous show, Euphoria, which was a huge hit and was really popular, and is still up for a third season, maybe? It’s been so long, and I don’t even know if Euphoria is even going to get a third season especially since The Idol was such a failure and everyone hated it, and everyone hates Sam Levinson now; that show kind of tarnished his reputation and derailed his career. I don’t have much skin in the game since I didn’t watch that show either, but still. I am glad that Da’Vine is getting more work and that she got the chance to be in a movie like this, and kick some ass, even if it’s not a lot because she is a good actress. She’s a great talent, and she deserves to be in more stuff. Method Man was okay he wasn’t my favorite cast member in this, I didn’t even realize that it was him because I had no idea what he looked like prior to this, but he was alright. It could be that I didn’t like his character, and that’s why I didn’t like him as much, but you are supposed to kind of hate his character, especially by the end when he’s revealed to be a traitor. But, I didn’t even really like him that much as a villain either. But, performance wise, he was alright. There are certainly worse rappers turned actors out there. 

Kerry Washington has been a lot of stuff, a lot of people will know her from Django: Unchained, but I know her best from the TV show, Scandal. Not that I actually watched that show, but that’s just what I always associated her with, I just knew that she was in Scandal, as the main character, Olivia Pope. That show went on for 6 years (from 2012 to 2018), and had 7 seasons with 124 episodes, so it was apart of the culture, it was a very popular show, especially with women ♀︎, who were arguably who the target audience was. It’s just like when Tony Goldwyn showed up in the 2023 action movie, Plane ✈️, I just knew him as “the president from Scandal, who had an affair with Olivia Pope.” Kerry Washington is pretty good in the movie as Kyrah, you totally buy her as a badass, but she also brings a lot of vulnerability to the role. 

 

She’s not just a badass action lady ♀︎ who kicks ass, she’s also a mother and a wife who’s been away from her husband and her son for 5 years, and has spent those 5 years assassinating her former teammates (her former spies/special operators), and she’s been out of the game of marriage and parenting (she was never in the game to begin since she left when Ky was still a baby) for so long that she’s forgotten how to be a mother and a wife, and she has to relearn those skills (or I guess in her case, learn them for the first time), just as Isaac has to relearn the skills of being a spy and a killer, although for him, his skills and instincts kick in pretty fast. It also help too that Kerry Washington is a mother in real life, and she has kids of her own, so it probably wasn’t that hard for her to get into the headspace of being mother, and being away from her children for long periods of time because of her job. 

 

Speaking of which, Omar Sy is pretty good in the movie, you might know him from the Jurassic World movies, or at least the first one and the third one, (he wasn’t in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom nor was he in Jurassic World Rebirth). I didn’t recognize him when I saw the trailer, but I immediately recognized him when I watched the movie, I was like, “Oh, that’s the guy ♂︎ from the Jurassic World movies. The guy ♂︎ who’s Owen’s partner at the park, and then later becomes a DGSE agent.” I do appreciate the fact that they let him be French 🇫🇷 in this movie, in fact he speaks French several times in the film; it’s this little thing that him Kyrah do with each other, where they speak French to one another, or they’ll converse in each other’s languages, with him speaking French and her speaking English, and them both being able to understand each other. Because the part was originally written to be American 🇺🇸, but when he joined the cast, they rewrote the part so that he would be French 🇫🇷. 

 

That is preferable to them making him an American 🇺🇸, and not them not explaining why he has a thick French accent 🇫🇷 and why he’s able to speak fluent French, beyond just a hand wave away. Or them making him put on a potentially unconvincing American accent 🇺🇸 that he’d probably slip in and out of throughout the course of the film. If he were Jean-Claude Van Damme, they probably would’ve just made him an American 🇺🇸 anyway, and just hand waved it away by saying that he’s an immigrant from France 🇫🇷 or Belgium 🇧🇪 (since Van Damme’s Belgian 🇧🇪), or that he’s an American 🇺🇸 who grew up in France 🇫🇷 or Belgium 🇧🇪 and simply picked up the accent, or that he’s from Quebec; all explanations that they’ve actually used in Van Damme’s movies over the years. One thing about Omar’s character, Isaac that I almost forgot to mention is that he’s deaf 🧏🏿‍♂️, and he wears hearing aids throughout the film. 

 

They even do a similar joke as in Up 🎈, the Pixar movie about an old man ♂︎ that straps a bunch of balloons 🎈 to his house and uses them to fly to South America to live out his childhood dream, where Carl Fredricksen turns off his hearing aids so that he won’t have to listen to the Boy Scout, Russell talk because he’s so annoyed by him. They do something similar where Isaac gets embarrassed that Ky and Kyrah are listening to his and Kyrah’s wedding song, “Truly” by Lionel Richie (I get more into that later on in the review), and he turns off his hearing aids so he won’t have to listen to them sing along with the song; even though he’s driving, and you do need to be able to hear while you’re on the road as well being able to see. They do this whole thing where he takes off his hearing aids when he’s about to fight someone, and he kind of goes into superhero mode. He even says to Ky that it’s his superpower, that when he doesn’t have his hearing aids on, it heightens his other senses and he’s able to focus better and therefore fight better. 

 

That’s why I was disappointed that they don’t show us the bank fight, so that we can truly see how Isaac fights when he doesn’t have his hearing aids on. Granted, we see a little bit of that later on, but it would’ve been more helpful if we saw it at the beginning, during his introductory scene. This is the first fight we see him in, the first fight he’s been in 5 years, and we hardly see it. It’s same problem with the action scenes in Godzilla (2014), only here, it’s just that one scene instead of the entire movie like in Godzilla (2014). But, it is interesting that they decided to make the character deaf 🧏🏿‍♂️. It doesn’t really play into the story, or in the character that much, we don’t even learn how he became deaf 🧏🏿‍♂️ (presumably because of his work as a Shadow), it’s an interesting trait the character has; something that sets him apart from the other characters, and makes him special. It’s also a way to give him super powers, and have him fight better, and show that he means business. If Issac takes off his hearing aids, you know you’re in trouble. If you’re on the other end of that fight, you’re best bet for survival is running rather than fighting. Omar is very charming, he’s a very handsome man ♂︎, you can see why Kyrah would fall for his character, Isaac, and because of him, Isaac is probably my favorite character in the whole movie. It makes me wish that Omar Sy got to be in more leading roles, especially here in America 🇺🇸, in Hollywood movies, this is really the first time that I’ve seen him in a leading role in a Hollywood movie.

 

Him and Kerry Washington do have a lot of chemistry together as those two characters. It’s a shame then that we don’t just see much of it on screen 😒. That’s probably my biggest complaint with this movie. The whole thing is built around the relationship between Kyrah and Isaac, and yet, they’re not on screen together that much. They spend the majority of the film separated from each other. Even they get back together in the middle half, they still end up splitting up, when Kyrah abandons Isaac and Ky to turn herself into Cinder, to get him to stop pursuing them. I wish that they had more scenes together, and that they were together for much longer periods of time. I would’ve perhaps if they were together at the start, kind of like Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez in the first Spy Kids movie, and they stuck together through the whole adventure. Like, before I saw the movie, I was under the impression that Cinder kidnaps their son, and they have to go and get him back, sort of like a Taken situation. That sort of happens in the movie because they all get captured at the end, and taken to Cinder’s private island, but it’s not what I was thinking, where their son is kidnapped at the start of the movie, and rescuing from is the main goal throughout the movie. 

 

Or another possibility is that they’re together at the beginning of the movie, their raising their son, trying to live a normal civilian life, until Cinder shows up with the other Shadows, and they just completely ruin their lives, and they’re forced to flee from their pursuers until the final confrontation. Again, that’s kind of what happens in the film, but not quite since Kyrah and Isaac are separated at the start of the movie, and she has to reunite with him and Ky in Colombia 🇨🇴 when shit starts to go down. I would’ve preferred it if they were together from the start, and if they were together throughout the majority of the movie, you can have them split up a few times, but mostly keep them together, I think that would’ve really reinforced this idea that this is a movie about family and that families need to stick together. But, I get what they were going for with this movie. Kerry Washington talked about it in the special features talked about how the movie is supposed to be a commentary on how society (particularly American society 🇺🇸) and the system (the American system 🇺🇸) tries to separate black families, and the struggle for black families to stay together. It also plays around with gender norms, and family dynamics, with how it’s the woman ♀︎ who goes out to essentially provide for the family (in this case, to keep the family safe), and it’s the man ♂︎ who stays behind to look after the kids, feed them, clothe them, take them to school, do all the things that a parent should do and is usually expected of the mother and not the father. 

 

It also plays around with gender roles in terms of Auntie and Unc’s relationship, with how Auntie is definitely the more dominant of the two, she’s the one with the position and authority, and she’s the one that calls all the shots, while Unc is a lot more submissive and follows along with what she wants, even if he doesn’t also agree; and then later on, he’s revealed to be a traitorous weasel who’s secretly working for the bad guys. He gets sent to prison by the end BTW, so in case you were worried that Unc gets away with it and is left off the hook, he doesn’t, he gets his punishment, his just dues. And it doesn’t at all detract from the film for me, I still enjoyed the film, and I still think it’s entertainment, it’s just a preference, it’s not what I would’ve done if I were writing this movie or even if I was directing it; I still think you could’ve conveyed that theme that Kerry Washington was talking about, even if they were together the whole time, in fact, it might’ve reinforced it more. 

Mark Strong is pretty good as the villain, Jack Cinder. He’s one of those villains that likes to beat up his own men ♂︎ whenever they fail. There’s a whole scene where gets upset at two of his henchmen when the Shadows fail to take out Kyrah and Isaac, and he just starts beating them up because he’s so angry 😡 that they failed. He even destroys his own glass coffee table in the process. At least he didn’t kill them, they managed to avoid that cliché. Of course, those two henchmen, Patrick (Marshall Cook) and Parker (Ed Quinn) turn out to be federal agents working for the OIG. This movie has two plot twists, and this is the second one. Patrick and Parker were working undercover, pretending to be Cinder’s personal aide and chief operative respectively, building a case against him so that could eventually take him into custody. Of course, it doesn’t actually work because the moment they try to arrest him, a shootout breaks out, and one of them seemingly gets killed. It’s Patrick, Patrick’s the one who gets killed, though in the behind-the-scenes featurettes for the movie on the special features, they did say that they tried to keep his death ambiguous in case they ever decided to bring him back in a potential sequel. But, he got stabbed in heart 🫀, I don’t how you’d survive that, or recover from that. 

 

I’ve always thought that once you get shot or stabbed in the heart 🫀, you’re done for. It’s just as fatal shooting or stabbing someone in the head. Medical technology has not gotten to a point where you can save someone from being shot or stabbed in the head or the heart 🫀, and we may never get to that point, especially the head, like there’s no such thing as a brain transplant 🧠, once you lose your brain 🧠, you’re done, there’s no replacing it. Even if we could actually replace someone’s brain 🧠 with somebody else’s, there’s no telling what could happen. Would that person even be the same person? Would their body even still able to function with their other brain 🧠 in their head? All sorts of logistical questions and ethical questions arise from the idea of a brain transplant 🧠. But, even Parker doesn’t really succeed in his goal since even though of the two, he’s the one who’s left alive by the end, it’s ultimately Kyrah and Isaac who kill Cinder. They don’t try to arrest him or anything, they just kill him, right then and there, by pumping his body full of lead, shooting him several times until he drops dead in a conveniently placed swimming pool 🏊‍♂️. They don’t just kill Cinder though, they kill all of the Shadows, every single one of them. The only one who actually gets arrested and put in prison is Unc, and that’s only because Auntie didn’t kill him and chose to spare his life for some reason. 

The kid is pretty good too, Jahleel Kamara. There isn’t that much to the character of Ky, he’s kind of just a regular 5 year old boy ♂︎, who experiences and witnesses some pretty traumatic stuff, and isn’t phased by any of it. Like, I said, he’s pretty desensitized, and if Kyrah and Isaac aren’t careful, he could grow up to be a serial killer. Cinder even threatened to groom him to be a special operator working under his orders, perhaps even be the next leader of Shadow Force, but Kyrah and Isaac put a stop to that real quick. If they do make a sequel to this, and depending how long after the first one it takes place, they could do this thing where Kyrah and Isaac train him on how to defend himself if they ever find themselves in another dangerous situation like they had before, like they pass some of their skills onto him, but not all of them of course because he’s still just a kid and they still want him to live a normal life and not be a trained killer like them; depending on how long after the first one the sequel takes place, Ky might not even be played by the same actor, but by an older actor who is more reflective of the age they want the character to be in that particular movie. He does say some curse words along the way, and that’s one of the main sources of humor in this movie, something to bring some levity to this mostly serious action movie, because it’s funny to hear kids use swear words, especially little kids like 5 year olds, which is what Ky is. 

 

But, Jahleel is good in the movie. It’s hard to judge child actors, and not be too harsh, or even too nice, but as far as child actors go, he is one of the better ones out there, especially one at his age. One thing that I like is that they had Ky constantly asking questions, like when his dad is driving him to that airport to fly out of France 🇫🇷 and into Colombia 🇨🇴, and then when they arrive in Colombia 🇨🇴 and reach the safe house in the jungle. That is one way that they managed to make Ky feel authentically like a real kid, because kids, they always ask questions, especially at that age, and they’re always rapid fire with it. The moment you answer one question, they’ve got another one waiting for you around the corner. I know because I was like that when I was that age, I have cousins, nephews, nieces, and even younger siblings who are like that. It’s just a thing kids naturally do because they’re curious about the world, and they want to know all the answers, and they think you, as the adult, have all the answers; even if you actually don’t. 

I do want to talk about the music for a little bit before I start wrapping this up, and get to the sequel discussion because believe it or not, music does play a significant role in this movie. It’s not a musical or anything, no one breaks out into song and starts singing in situations where they’d usually be talking, it’s not even a Sinners style musical where the singing is diegetic, where the characters are aware that they’re singing and they’re singing in situations where it’s appropriate. It’s not even laced with a ton of needle drops like Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but music is integral to the story, and to the character development. As I mentioned earlier, they keep playing this Lionel Richie song called “Truly” a few different points throughout the film, because it was the song that Kyrah and Isaac played at their wedding when they got married 💍. And then when they split up, when Kyrah goes off on her own to kill off the other Shadows so that they won’t hunt her and her family anymore, Isaac starts listening to that song on the regularly and even shows it to Ky, and it becomes Ky’s favorite song, and he always asks his dad to play it on the radio, by connecting the phone 📱 to the radio and playing it on the speakers, you know how people do it nowadays. 

 

There’s even a whole scene where Kyrah, Isaac, and Ky are driving out of the jungle hideout after the Shadows discovered their location (thanks to Unc giving it away), and Kyrah kind of confronts Isaac about the fact he keeps listening to that song and that he showed it to their son, Isaac doesn’t want to talk about it because he’s embarrassed of the fact that he still listens to their wedding song and he didn’t want her to know that he does, but Kyrah makes him play it and Ky tells him to play it too. So, he does, and both Kyrah and Ky start listening along to it (Kyrah’s mostly doing it to tease him) and Isaac gets so embarrassed that he decides to turn his hearing aids off (while he’s driving mind you), so he can’t hear them singing along to the song. That’s the scene I was talking about earlier that’s similar to Up 🎈, they just copied that joke from Up 🎈, except they made it more reckless because he’s driving, and you kind of need to be able to hear things when you’re driving. Especially in a dangerous situation like that, where they’re being hunted by a bunch of trained killers working for the government, or were working for government, now they’re just working for this one man out for revenge and trying to cover up his crimes. But it’s okay I guess because he’s got super powers, even though he can’t hear without his hearing aids, his other senses are heightened, he’s more aware when he’s not hearing anything 😉. 

They play other songs in the movie besides Lionel Richie, they also play “Mercy” by Jessica Childress, “Brick House” by the Commodores, and “Last One Standing” by Monophonics, which is played during the end credits. So, I guess it is loaded up with a bunch of needle drops like Guardians of the Galaxy, but not to the same exact. It does at least have the same amount of music as in Nobody (2021), and its sequel, Nobody 2 presumably. They reference the song, “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nothing Ta F***k Wit” by Tom Morello, Chad Smith & Wu-Tang Clan, they even named one of the featurettes on the special features on the Blu-Ray 💿 after it, like it’s literally called “Making Shadow Force – Ain’t Nothing to F***k With,” but they’re don’t actually play the song itself at any point in the film, not even during the end credits. The only reason why they reference that song, and why they bring up Wu-Tang Clan at all is that Method Man in this movie. But, Method Man isn’t the only rapper in the movie, they’ve got another one up in here, Krondon, he plays one of the Shadows that joins Cinder and tries to kill Kyrah, Isaac, and Ky, his character’s name is Cysgod. 

 

He is black, but he’s got albinism, so he’s kind of like Michael Jackson where he’s a black man despite having white skin, only he doesn’t have the same thing that Michael Jackson had. Michael Jackson had a skin condition called vitiligo, which causes patches of skin to lose their pigment, and that spread to his whole body, causing his skin to turn white. But he started out black, he was pretty dark skinned (a lighter skinned black, like a medium brown, but still), and only became whiter later on as a result of his skin losing its pigment because of the vitiligo. While Krondon was born like that from the beginning, he was born an albino, despite him being black; despite him being of African American descent. There isn’t that much to his character, he doesn’t do that much, or at least, we don’t see him do a whole lot, and he doesn’t have that many lines. The most he gets to do is during the climax, and even then, it’s not a whole lot, and he gets killed right away. The Asian guy ♂︎, Varjo, played by Yoson An (a New Zealand-Chinese actor and filmmaker 🇳🇿🇨🇳), gets more to do than Krondon does as Cysgod, and he lasts way longer. He’s the one that actually gets to have a one-on-one fight with Isaac and not Cysgod. 

They do kind of leave it open for a sequel, not just it ends with Auntie thinking about forming another Shadow Force team, one that actually follows the law and the constitution, and isn’t used for criminal purposes like the previous one was (Cinder was using Shadow Force to serve his own ends, rather than serve the United States 🇺🇸 and serve the constitution), but also because Kyrah is pregnant 🤰🏽 with a second child. She reveals it to Isaac and when he’s lying his head on her lap, and she starts doing that tapping thing they like to do each other on his head (it’s meant to represent a baby’s heartbeat 🫀), and he’s pretty clueless as to what she’s trying to tell him because he doesn’t have his hearing aids on. But, we audiences know what she’s saying by doing that, she’s pregnant 🤰🏽 with another baby, and Ky’s going to be a big brother. So, if there is a sequel, it’s going to be Kyrah and Isaac leading a new Shadow Force team that’s fully reformed that doesn’t have any of the criminal elements the previous one did, to take down some new bad guys, while trying to balance raising two kids ✌️ instead of just one ☝️. It sounds like a pretty good set up for a sequel, like if that was what they were planning to do with the sequel, I wouldn’t mind. 

 

But, I don’t know if it will actually get a sequel since the movie bombed at the box office 💣. It only made $5.3 million 💵 against a budget of $40 million 💵, which is pretty bad 😬 as you can imagine. It’s probably one of the biggest bombs 💣 of the year so far. It didn’t help that they released it the week after Thunderbolts*, which didn’t exactly do too hot at the box office itself, but still outgrossed this movie by a huge margin. The studio lost $10 million 💵 as a result of the movie’s box office failure. I don’t know exactly what caused the movie’s box office failure, I’m sure Thunderbolts* played a role in why so many people ignored this movie and chose to focus that one. The advertising was certainly lacking, I didn’t see any marketing for this movie outside of that one trailer that I saw, and the poster. So hardly anyone knew that this movie existed or that it was coming out. I do wonder if race played a role in this movie’s box office performance, because there are still plenty of people who will refuse to watch a movie with two black leads, and not just any black leads, a black male and black female lead ♂︎♀︎. But then again, Sinners had a black lead, it had a black majority cast, and it still managed to break through and become a huge success; bigger than anyone ever imagined. Grossing over $367 million 💵 against a budget of $90 million-$100 million 💵. So, I don’t know, I don’t know why people showed up for Sinners, but didn’t show up for Shadow Force (2025). Not only that, but the movie was torn apart by critics. It has a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes 🍅. So, like with The Killer’s Game, this is another movie that did poorly at the box office and was hated by critics that I actually enjoyed.

 

 

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(This is the trailer to Shadow Force (2025).)