SHADOW FORCE

Name: SHADOW FORCE
Item: SHADOW FORCE
Author: Review

"Marred by Poor Execution and Negative Content"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

SHADOW FORCE is an annoyingly generic action thriller. It tries to balance the cutesy family dynamics of a husband-wife team of former CIA agents and their 6-year-old son with lots of action. Their former boss has put a $100 million bounty on their heads and orders the rest of his team to kill them. Meanwhile, he’s about to play a major role in a meeting of world economic powers. Can the parents fend off the assassins, protect their son and stop their boss?

The married heroes in SHADOW FORCE lack chemistry and charisma. Meanwhile, the lead villain (their former CIA boss) offers a hammy, heavy-handed performance where he shouts and waves his hands around from start to finish. Almost nothing transpiring in SHADOW FORCE offers the element of surprise. The movie has a light moral worldview supporting family and marriage. However, it’s marred by lots of strong foul language and very strong violence. Also, the little boy spouts one or two obscenities and suggestive dialogue related to a pop song in two scenes. So, SHADOW FORCE is excessive.

Content:

(C, B, Pa, Ab, LLL, VVV, S, N, A, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Light Christian, moral pro-family worldview with some positive Christian symbols and references, including images of Jesus on the Cross, and a bank thief wears a devil’s mask, and where the two leads quit being assassins or a corrupt CIA man who has a secret team for committing unauthorized killings, with a positive portrayal of marriage and parenthood, but that’s mitigated by the married couple and their friends laughing it off when their 6-year-old son drops “f” bombs and talks about “boobies and booties” in sexualized dialogue meant to elicit laughs, and villain violates Christian and biblical moral values when he describes his job as “doing God’s dirty work around the globe”;

Foul Language:

At least 39 obscenities (including at least 28 “f” words), one profanity using the name of Jesus, and one GD profanity;

Violence:

Married coupe physically fights in front of son when they reunite after living separately for a few years to keep their son safe, numerous hitmen on motorcycles try to kill married former CIA agents with lots of gunfire and by trying to run them off the road, the wife uses a massive machine gun with turrets to kill dozens of the motorcycle killers, a massive 18-wheeler repeatedly rams the heroes’ car and makes it run off the road and appears to submerge under water, but the family discreetly escapes to safety, frequent other shootings and , hand-to-hand combat, a villain puts his large gun to a 6-year-old boy’s head and threatens to kill him, there’s security camera footage of the husband fighting off and shooting dead a team of bank robbers, a man is punched and thrown down several flights of stairs, a woman is severely beaten by two men, a man is stabbed in the heart, a woman is shot in the head, and two boats race each other in the water, crashing into each other repeatedly;

Sex:

No depicted or implied sex scenes, though a married couple briefly kiss while the husband’s shirt is off, but there’s a brief comment about cats and dogs getting sexual together;

Nudity:

A shirtless man shaves in the morning;

Alcohol Use:

Main villain casually drinks alcohol in several scenes;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

6-year-old boy is portrayed comically as he repeatedly talks about “boobies and booty” and says the “f” word several times (not rebuked), and villain runs a secret force of illicit government-trained killers and uses them for evil purposes, but that is rebuked.

More Detail:

SHADOW FORCE is an annoyingly generic action thriller that tries to balance the cutesy family dynamics of a husband-wife team of former CIA agents and their 6-year-old son with lots of action. They run for their lives from bounty-hunting assassins, who are working for their former boss, who is about to play an important role in an international meeting of economic powers. SHADOW FORCE has violent shootouts, chases and hand-to-hand combat battles that aren’t inventive enough to offer much of a thrill to viewers.

The movie stars veteran TV actress Kerry Washington (ABC’s SCANDAL) as Kyrah and French action hero Omar Sy as Isaac, who both used to be part of an elite and unauthorized team of assassins called the Shadow Force. When she got pregnant with her son Ky, Kyrah left the force behind and worked independently around the globe – a fact that limited her time with her family over the years.

Their former boss Jack Cinder (Mark Strong) has been hunting for them ever since, and suddenly stumbles across surveillance footage of the couple in separate violent incidents. He puts a $100 million bounty on their heads and orders the rest of Shadow Force to kill them. At the same time, Jack is about to play a major role in the elite annual meeting of the G7 nations (the top seven economic powerhouses on the planet), and Kyrah is determined to stop him from taking dangerous actions at the conference.

Kyrah sneaks home to reunite with Omar and Ky after a long time away. Thus, begins a cat and mouse chase that jumps from Miami to Mexico to a final showdown at Jack’s private island off the coast of Spain.

Can Kyrah and Omar bring Jack down and save Ky? Can they rekindle their marriage now that they’re finally physically together again?

SHADOW FORCE is the latest in a seemingly endless parade of spy movies that try to balance intense action with lighthearted family moments. However, it’s a formula that’s been tired for many years, and the movie’s screenplay gives them lame dialogue lacking any depth or actually funny lines.

SHADOW FORCE has plenty of action. However, the movie’s best sequence – a chase where the family has to speed down a winding highway while trapped in dense fog and being chased by a platoon of motorcycle assassins – is shot so fuzzily due to the dark of night and the fog that it’s nearly impossible to tell what’s happening. The rest of the shootouts and endless hand to hand combat scenes are completely lacking in awe-inspiring innovation.

Furthermore, Kerry Washington and Omar Sy as the wife and husband completely lack chemistry. She spends the entire movie with a sour pout on her face, and he mumbles his dialogue while trying to be the strong, silent type. Finally, Mark Strong as the villain is embarrassingly hammy to watch as he shouts and waves his arms around every time he’s onscreen.

Worst of all, 6-year-old Ky (Jahleel Kamara) has two scenes where he drops “f” bombs and happily discusses “boobies and booties” in sexualized dialogue that’s inappropriate for such a young child. His parents and their friends just laugh it off, leaving audiences to wonder how bad they are as parents. So, although SHADOW FORCE has a light moral, pro-family worldview overall, it’s marred by immoral content.

Almost nothing that transpires in SHADOW FORCE offers the element of surprise. Sadly, the movie also serves up plenty of strong foul language and graphic violence that makes it excessive. The “good” news is that SHADOW FORCE is so poorly done that it’s worth skipping altogether anyway.