In the case of Codename: Banshee, he angled aging Spanish stud Antonio Banderas (of Bullet Head [2017]) to do the two-day-shoot part that could have been played by any macho male twilight-career star desperate for work (say, pre-dementia Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson). In this sense, Codename: Banshee feels particularly like a "geezer teaser" — see, in this regard, our reviews for Breach (2020), with Bruce Willis, or Force of Nature (2020), with Mel Gibson.
Trailer to
Codename: Banshee
The last Keeyes movie that we saw was The Survivalist, with John Malkovich and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, an end-of-times flick movie that offers a relatively lousy but mildly diverting 1.5 hours of entertainment. The script to that movie, like the script to this one, was tossed together by someone named Matthew Rogers. The man has obviously seen a lot of genre films, for he is familiar enough with them to be able to throw together middling, generic, by-the-number narratives that offer everything expected of the given genre; unluckily, going by The Survivalist and Codename: Banshee, he also offers no new angle. In regard to Codename: Banshee, as we say in our review of The Survivalist, you've "seen it before, done better and done worse — but [it] has some good unintentional guffaws and a decent scene of two."
That said, The Survivalist is definitely the better movie of the two. Indeed, Codename: Banshee is so unexceptional, if not redundant and uninteresting, that it verges on unnecessary.
Talented Jaime King (of My Bloody Valentine [2009] and The Tripper [2006 / trailer]) is Delilah, an occasionally choleric former agent who ends up becoming a free agent hitperson. (The why is shown in the truly believable and tense — Not! — opening scene.) Years later, she cool, she good, she kill everyone in her way to get her target — only, the first hit we see her do is shanghaied by the bigger freelance agent Anthony (an effective Tommy Flanagan of Smokin' Aces [2006 / trailer]), who has armies of men at his beck and call. Anthony has some bones to pick with Delilah's former mentor, Caleb (Banderas), and figures Delilah must know where he is. She doesn't, but after she shoots her way free, she quickly — like, over the course of a car drive — locates the long-disappeared mentor.... Well, the rest of the movie is pretty much just as by the numbers.
Codename: Banshee operates in one of those worlds in which two or three dozen men and an entire office building can be shot up without any cops showing up and, once the day's work has ended, a clean-up crew can be called in to get rid of the bodies and make the shot-up building look clean as a whistle. A world in which, as mentioned before, a man who has completely gone underground can suddenly be located within minutes. (That aside, had Delilah not found and gone to him, Anthony probably never would have done either.) Where not-so-loyal computer hackers live in big empty mansions in which, when they hear a strange noise, they walk around going "Hello? Is anybody there?" Where one suddenly finds out that one's mentor has a never-before-mentioned young adult daughter. Where everyone is willing to die for their job (and does). Where....
Ah, who cares? There is no real story to Codename: Banshee, just a slim thread upon which the same thing (a shootout or fight) repeats again and again, differing only in location, the number of participants, and the weapons used. Codename: Banshee being a geezer teaser, Banderas' pay rate is probably the reason why his character, Caleb, — much like Mel Gibson in Force of Nature (2020) — clocks out relatively early. And that is also probably why the never-before-mentioned, ass-kicking, young-adult daughter, Haley (Catherine Davis of Run Fight Hide [2020 / trailer]) was written into the banal narrative: had it ended with Caleb's end, a short movie it would have indeed been.
As mentioned, Tommy Flanagan is pretty good as Anthony, forever exuding disdain, rage, and palpable threat. As Haley, Catherine Davis is serviceable, as are most of the tertiary characters around Big Bad Anthony. Banderas is Banderas, and as such he sleepwalks through his part but remains effective enough all the way up until his death scene, which is a little too long. Jaime King is variable, but she handles herself well when playing the cool killer and punching the shit out of everyone, and doesn't embarrass herself when she has to show emotion or doubt. (Her shooting style and presence onscreen is highly reminiscent of Christian Bale's dead-shot John Preston in the science fiction film Equilibrium [2002 / trailer]; she just flies about a lot less.)
As Banderas, as previously mentioned, leaves the set early, towards the end Codename: Banshee turns into a sisters-are-doing-it-for-themselves flick with Haley and Delilah facing off against a never-ending stream of expendable hired men and, ultimately, Big Bad Anthony himself. (The extended scene of him beating the shit out of Delilah is about the only one in the entire movie that both surprises and makes one cringe at the violence.) But while it is always fun to watch women shoot men and fight to the death and win in the end, all that has also already been done in other, better movies.
Has nothing to do with the movie —
Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves:
Codename: Banshee is about as creative and original as a fart, but if all you're looking for is 1.5 hours of violent moving images (inter-spaced with some dull stuff) during which you can completely turn off your brain, you could do worse. At least the acting holds its own.
A public service message from a wasted life:
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