Code Name Banshee is one hell of a schizophrenic movie. It starts with a laughably bad action scene and I pretty much wrote it off as Z grade cinema. And then Antonio Banderas shows up and suddenly the non-action drama and suspense is good. And then the villain spouts off some decent villain-speak… and then there’s a cool action scene followed by a terrible on. Argh. Were there two directors and screenwriters taking turns?

So the flick stars Jaimie King as a contract killer on the lamb from other contract killers so she goes into hiding with her contract killer trainer (Banderas) and they have to fight off a horde of contract killers. Contract Killers be out there contract killing, I guess.

So, yeah, not the most elaborate or interesting plot. But some of the dialog is decent and Antonio Banderas does a surprising amount of heavy lifting for his relatively small part.

I think the main problem with this film is Jaimie King. She’s asked to pull of a John Wick-type killer but can’t hold her dual-wielded pistols with steady hands. Her gunplay scenes just go downhill from there… she’s unconvincing, at best. Then, when she gets into a fist fight with baddies, the action is sometimes pretty cool… though maybe that’s the stunt double in silhouette giving and throwing punches.

Add in the laughably bad blood squibs and muzzle flashes and you have a cut-rate action flick with occasionally good sequences surrounded by a reasonably suspenseful drama. Some of the dialog even edges up to being clever and interesting. The film looks good usually – moody and dark with nice camera work (so long as you ignore the CGI gun-fu).

This flick is a mess but there is a beating heart of a good film buried not too far down. If you can ignore, you know, the action in this action flick (or have more patience than I did), you might come away enjoying it. Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

Score: 68