Plot
During a mission, CIA agent Avery Graves steals a USB flash memory and kills Japanese arms supplier Kenji in Tokyo, who is using a business façade to ship arms to terrorists. Avery had been assigned to investigate Kali, a mysterious assassin who kills arms dealers and drug runners. She comes home to find her husband David missing. Croatian cyberterrorist Breznov then calls Avery to blackmail her into getting him "Canary Black" – a file hidden in the fake tooth of Laszlo Stoica, a man currently detained at the CIA Black Site for espionage – in exchange for David's life. At the Black Site, Avery pulls out Stoica's tooth, but there is no file in it. She escapes, and is now on the wanted list.
She meets with her boss Jarvis Hedlund in his car to talk about Canary Black. He eventually traps Avery, whom the CIA captures. Their convoy is then ambushed by masked men who attach explosive devices to two of the vehicles, but Avery escapes after the car she is being transported in crashes and overturns. A masked man follows Avery into an alley, where she stabs him. She removes his mask and discovers that he is her neighbor Niklaus, whose real name is Rurik van Klaus, an Austrian private contractor. He dies before saying anything about David's whereabouts.
Meanwhile, Deputy Director Nathan Evans meets Breznov in his official fake capacity as the head of security services. Avery ties up Evans in his hotel room and tortures him to receive the password of his agency mainframe account. After finding it blocked, she enlists her hacker friend Sorina to gain access to a CIA server inside a defence contractor company building. Aided by Sorina's human-transport-capable quadricopter drone, Avery gets on the building's rooftop. There, Avery copies the Canary Black file. After an escape from the building and a drone crash, she brings the file to Sorina, who analyses it. Canary Black turns out to be a virus that will cause all computer systems to crash, end internet usage, and cause stock markets to crash globally on a country-by-country basis. Avery takes Sorina's phone and texts Jarvis, telling him to track the phone's location. Avery then dives in a car she previously hijacked, to an agreed payphone to answer Breznov's call and confirm that she obtained the file prior to a midnight ultimatum, but one of his henchmen, posing as a homeless man, tases and injects her. She is then brought to Breznov's cyber HQ in an abandoned Cold War-era subterranean complex and chained up.
Breznov broadcasts a video to the Global Unification Summit about his access to Canary Black. He requests a ransom of 1% of GDP of every country, roughly a trillion dollars. As an example, he targets Singapore, cutting off all power there. Jarvis tracks Sorina's phone carried by Avery, locates the hideout and kills the entrance guards, but is captured by Breznov, who kills him. As Avery is hanging on chains, David is shot with a deliberate flesh wound to the abdomen so that he bleeds out slowly. After Breznov leaves the room, Avery attacks Breznov's vengeful female henchman, Rurik's partner, with her legs. David grabs a knife, kills two henchmen and reveals to Avery that he is Kali, that he had been lying to her throughout their marriage and that it had been him who had informed Breznov about Canary Black's existence.
As the ransom money starts pouring in, David kills the power to stop transmitting the virus. In the ensuing struggle, Avery kills Breznov and stops the virus from uploading completely. Avery returns her engagement ring to David, saying that their marriage is beyond fixing. As the CIA arrives, David jumps into the river and Avery is arrested. While she is in custody, Evans tells Avery that David is dead while taunting her. Elizabeth Mills arrives, and offers Avery a job at MC6 in exchange for avoiding jail time - a new organization that takes on critical missions on the highest scale of threat. While walking outside, Avery sees her ring on a handrail, indicating that David is still alive.
Production
Canary Black was first introduced at the 2022 Cannes Film Market as a spy thriller directed by Pierre Morel, written by Matthew Kennedy, and starring Kate Beckinsale. [3] At the American Film Market later that year, the first images of the production were released as Anton put the film up for sale. [4]
Filming began in Croatia in October 2022, [5] and continued through January 2023. [6] Filming took place primarily in Zagreb, where shooting interrupted service for several trams in Zagreb to control the environment of the outdoor action sequences, [7] [6] which included Beckinsale flying over the city from a drone and hanging from rooftops. [8] Filming in Zagreb utilized the Dinamo Zagreb's Stadion Maksimir as a movie set, and the city of Rovinj doubled for Tokyo. [6] The end scene was filmed in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the triple bridge.
