Pressing play on an action movie like Canary Black is like ordering from McDonald's. You've already agreed to lower your standards so you don't have to complain about it being highly processed junk food. This is what you signed up for. You were in the mood for a comfortable meal in the middle of the street and that's all you can rightly expect.

But we've all been to a fast food place where you technically got what you paid for, but the food was so greasy you could hardly eat it. Or it was crushed for no apparent reason. Or there is a hair in it. Sure, you ordered from the dollar menu, but even the dollar menu makes some flimsy promises, and if they can't even get that right…then you have “Canary Black.”

“Canary Black” is a new kidnapping thriller from Pierre Morel, who directed “Taken” 15 years ago. This is one of the most iconic films in the thriller genre, a simple but highly effective piece of authoritative action entertainment where, if angered, Liam Neeson can legally kill anyone in his country. The film relaunched Neeson's career as a three-star action movie icon and popularized the phrase “I have certain skills.”

Unfortunately, Morel seems to have lost his abilities. “Canary Black” is recognizable as an action film, but it is neither exciting nor dramatic enough to be considered entertainment. It's not even versatile enough to serve as a low-budget throwback to lower-end 1990s B-movies like “Hollow Point” or “Crackerjack,” which at least got that, given the other one Standard action nonsense wanted to stand out. You at least had to have the menu some Personality.

Kate Beckinsale plays Avery Graves, an American secret agent living in Croatia with her clueless house husband David (Rupert Friend). Their latest mission is thrown into disarray when David is kidnapped and a mysterious voice on the phone instructs Avery Graves to steal a top-secret CIA computer file called – you guessed it – “Canary Black.” (What does “Canary Black” do? It’s a MacGuffin. It’s MacGuffs.)

So Avery Graves — whose full name is mentioned so often that there must be dozens of outtakes in which her co-stars call her “Gravery Aves” — is now a refugee from her own organization. Her boss Jarvis (the late Ray Stevenson in one of his final roles) isn't sure he can trust her, but the film goes through these challenges nonetheless. You'd think these top-secret spy rings would have a protocol for situations like this, because if movies like “Canary Black” and “Mission: Impossibles” are to be believed, their agents go rogue every two weeks.

Kate Beckinsale has been a reliable action star for decades, even – and unfortunately often – when her films can't keep up. This time she works with her hands tied behind her back, often literally. The blasé fight scenes are often illegible and she wears a terrible and terribly distracting wig in some scenes. It's less like we're watching “Canary Black” and more like we're watching “Where's Waldo” with Beckinsale's stunt double.

Beckinsale also uses an American accent for most of the film, but most of the time she sounds high on adrenaline, in a very different space than the other actors, so even the tone of “Canary Black” is rarely consistent. For some reason, Kate Beckinsale also manages to imitate Marcia Gay Harden perfectly, which makes you wonder why Marcia Gay Harden doesn't do more action movies. “Canary Black” isn’t a great movie, but it’s a good proof of concept for Harden’s management team.

The plot is just a big ol' bunch of things happening. Avery Graves' relationship with her husband takes up maybe three minutes of the film's time, and we know it's based on a lie, so our emotional investment is low. When the spy plot finally gets going, it's all shoehorned together from genre film clichés, and even these tropes don't remain consistent. CIA agent Maxfield (Jaz Hutchins, “Peacock”) is the guy who brags to Avery Graves about torturing his prisoners for information, but in the very next scene he stops her from torturing his prisoner for information, and says she went too far and will pay for it. So what… what are we even doing here, film?

There are moments of spy-gadget fun in “Canary Black” – with “silent masks” and a drone converted into a jetpack – but considering how dull the rest of Morel's film is, the entertainment value may have been a coincidence be. You can't even sit back and enjoy what's happening because the editing makes it difficult to follow. A chase scene in which villains plant landmines on our heroes' car is so chaotic that it's hard to tell whose vehicle just exploded or rammed into another. You think it's Ray Stevenson or Kate Beckinsale because just before the collision we saw them reacting to a potential danger, but immediately after the collision we reduced the speed and no, they were in another car the whole time . I ask again: What Are Are we even doing this?

“Canary Black” is a cheeseburger on Amazon Prime’s value menu, but they left out the cheese. And the meat. It's a showcase for an action movie star who has absolutely no interest in being distracted by it. And it makes about as much sense as its title. That means none.

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