Kate Beckinsale’s 2024 Action Thriller Is A Streaming Hit On Prime Video

Prime Video has been tossing up a healthy mix of streaming “content” of late, and has been seeing success with its diverse slate. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley’s murder mystery “Killer Heat” dominated Prime Video in October of 2024, which followed the success of the Awkwafina and John Cena comedy “Jackpot!” in August. Now, it’s time for the new action thriller “Canary Black” to have a turn.

The movie comes from French filmmaker and “Taken” director Pierre Morel, who has much to answer for simply by virtue of the fact he launched Liam Neeson into his seemingly never-ending grizzled hard-man era (an age that has also produced some of Neeson’s worst movies). Now, Morel has turned his sights on poor old Kate Beckinsale, who fronts “Canary Black” as CIA agent Avery Graves. The film finds Graves being blackmailed by terrorists who want her to retrieve the titular file in order to save her kidnapped husband’s life. Doing so, however, would essentially constitute treason, yet Graves pushes ahead for the sake of her husband, kicking and punching people all the way.

Amazon probably thought quite a lot of “Canary Black,” seeing as the company has proudly declared it a “Prime Video Exclusive.” Judging by the critical response, admitting responsibility for such a film might not seem to be in its best interest. On the flip side, the movie’s performance on the streamer suggests Amazon did well to acquire this spy thriller.

“Canary Black” hit Prime Video on October 24, 2024, and has been enjoying worldwide success ever since. According to FlixPatrol, a site that tracks and aggregates streaming viewership data, the movie has been hanging around the top of the most-watched movie charts in the United States. There, it hit number three on November 6, 2024, before falling to the fourth spot as of November 8. It remains at number four at the time of writing, which, considering the film came out almost three weeks ago at this point, is pretty impressive.

But there’s more to this story, as “Canary Black” is charting around the globe. The movie is currently charting in 59 countries, and even more impressive is the fact that it’s number one in 15 of those. On top of that, “Canary Black” has been in the number one spot for a week straight in Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, suggesting Amazon has found a sweet spot for Kate Beckinsale actioners in sub-saharan Africa.

Though Africa has apparently fallen in love with “Canary Black,” the Kate Beckinsale’s version of “Taken” is truly a global hit, with everywhere from Canada and Chile to Senegal and Switzerland propelling “Canary Black” into the charts for a prolonged period.

Is “Canary Black” worth your time? Well, over on Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 18% score based on 11 reviews, two of which came from “top critics” who were split on their analysis of the film — although how Rotten Tomatoes decided The Guardian‘s assessment of the movie as “serviceable enough” was “fresh” I’m unsure.

I would say that the global success of “Canary Black” boggles the mind considering the critical reaction, but this is 2024 and we know that middling streaming films mostly do very well in terms of viewership. There was that time an infamous Michael Fassbender flop proved Netflixers would watch anything, and need I say more about Kevin Hart’s “Lift” becoming a streaming success?

So, all that remains for Pierre Morel’s latest is to maintain its chart position as long as it can, or perhaps even climb higher up the rankings. In order to do so, however, it will have to take down zombie action thriller “Apocalypse Z,” which became a Prime Video hit in early November 2024, and at the time of writing remains at the number one spot on Prime Video U.S. (via FlixPatrol). If anything can do it, it’s yet another kind of bad streaming movie, so “Canary Black” definitely has a chance.