Code Name Banshee

An assassin tale which lacks interesting ideas about who its characters are, or even wish to be, Code Name Banshee is a cliché-driven, unappealing, rinse-and-repeat exercise in expended bullets, nothing more.

The whole thing is extremely straightforward. There are no twists, no turns, no surprises. The story just plays out exactly as it tells us it will. Even the “big” final act showdown (because we have to have a final act showdown) lacks pizzazz.

The by-the-numbers script by Matthew Rogers careens along, every so-called twist and turn predictable. No flair or creativity seems to have been applied to any of it.

While it's great to see King confident in a straight-up warrior role, there's so little actually going on in this flat action movie that it feels like the warmup act for a much better movie.

Code Name Banshee is a passable time-filler for action fans, but little else.

Code Name Banshee struggles to be cohesive from the start. The film plays fast and loose with timelines while using bizarre flashback cinematography. The blood-splattering gunplay offers minor thrills.

There's nothing here that's different from the competition, with Keeyes merely looking to complete the picture, not challenge himself with a stronger serving of assassin antagonisms.

This straight-up C-movie...flops into lots and lots of cliche-riddled conversation, time line stumbles (“Five years earlier,” or is it?) and finishes with a whole lot of gunfire, most of it by The Character Who Never Reloads.