While one-man army stories are largely the rage thanks to the John Wick franchise, a recent growing trend is that of families finding their idyllic lives upended when the parents’ prior lives as operatives catch up with them. Thus far, none of the movies utilizing this concept have really done anything exciting with it, with Mark Wahlberg’s The Family Plan being tonally mismatched, while Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx’s Back in Action was largely unoriginal. With Shadow Force, Kerry Washington and Omar Sy get a little more to do, but the movie still doesn’t do enough to stand out.

Washington and Sy star in Shadow Force as Kyrah Owens and Isaac Sarr, two elite operatives who, while working for the тιтular covert special forces unit, fell in love and gave birth to a son, Ky, leading to their decision to leave the organization. Kyrah offers to draw out their fellow soldiers and their leader to bring the group down, while Isaac spends the next four years raising Ky on his own. When Isaac and Ky get wrapped up in a bank robbery that the former stops, they must go on the run and Kyrah rejoins them to protect their son from Shadow Force.

Kyrah & Isaac Are Not The Most Interesting Couple Here

Washington & Sy Also Feel Like They’re Holding Back

While the plot does generally follow the formula of its concept, one nice tweak is that its central couple is far from being a happily married pair. Kyrah’s years-long absence from Isaac and Ky’s lives creates an understandable bitterness on his part, leading to some meaningful conversations about the importance of time spent with family and realization on her part of what she’s missed. It also makes for a sweet falling-back-in-love story for the two as they remember why they wanted to start a family in the first place.

That being said, there are a few problems with their relationship being at the forefront of the movie’s focus. The first is Sy and Washington’s performances, which aren’t inherently bad, but also feel like they’re holding themselves back, particularly in more emotional moments, in which Washington’s sadness doesn’t feel all that authentic. The other problem is there’s a far more interesting couple in the story, in the form of Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Auntie and Method Man’s Unc.

Longtime friends of Isaac and Kyrah and also covert operatives, though for the Office of the Inspector General, Auntie and Unc are shown as being in the midst of investigating the film’s main antagonist, Mark Strong’s Jack Cinder, while also looking to support Sy and Washington’s characters. While an action movie generally necessitates bringing the villain down via violence, Auntie and Unc’s stakeouts immediately prove more compelling than the movie’s action sequences. They also greatly benefit from Randolph and Method Man’s great performances, being the funniest of the cast, particularly when playing off of each other.

The Movie’s Action Is Well-Choreographed, But Poorly Executed

With All The Genre Experience Here, I Can’t Believe How Limp This Feels

With Joe Carnahan in the director’s chair, and having co-written the script with Leon Chills, the one thing I thought would keep Shadow Force afloat amidst its predictable story was its action. I still often revisit his A-Team movie remake, as well as the Frank Grillo-led Boss Level, as their action is largely exciting and well put together. So, imagine my surprise at how lackluster the action proved to be in this movie.

That’s not to say it isn’t well-choreographed, as the hand-to-hand fight scenes clearly have thought behind them, and Washington and Sy are putting in the work. But the problem is that much of the cast feels like they’re so focused on nailing the beats of the choreography that they’re forgetting to actually sell every punch, kick, or hit. This kind of took me out of the scenes, as I never really felt any stakes were present, and that the end result was decided well before the first punch was thrown.

This also carries over to the movie’s gunfights, which are not only worse than the hand-to-hand combat but often laughable. One character is hit with sH๏τgun blasts from mere feet away, and yet not only do they survive, they also have enough energy to taunt the person who sH๏τ at them. Most of the characters also forget that gunsH๏τs come with recoil and it never feels like they even believe they’re firing weapons.

While the acting is the main part of why Shadow Force‘s action fails to impress, one other element that should’ve been an easy fix is the sound effects. GunsH๏τs and explosions are weirdly muted, and while fight scenes don’t need cartoonish punch effects, they certainly need some proper thudding sounds to match the hits and sell them even more. Sadly, as much as I love everyone involved in the film, Shadow Force is certainly an unfortunate blemish in all of their filmographies.

Shadow Force is now in theaters.