Canary Black Plot Summary
Canary Black is an action thriller that follows the story of a CIA agent, Avery Graves, as she tries to rescue her husband, David, from a group of Croatian terrorists. Avery is a top CIA agent, trained to become an unstoppable force from her teenage years after losing her parents.
She lives a quiet suburban life with her husband, David, when she is not out killing terrorists and gathering information for the agency. The film kicks off with the kidnap of her husband and Avery receiving an anonymous call asking her to steal a mysterious file, Canary Black.
To save her husband, Avery becomes a traitor to her country, and she has to fight her way through both terrorist henchmen and CIA agents hunting her down, led by a brute Deputy Director Evans who wants not only the file back but Avery’s head on a platter.
Does Avery get the Black Canary File?
The kidnapper, Breznov, the director of the National Security Service, commands Avery to steal a file hidden in the fake tooth of a prisoner, Stoic, in a CIA underground safe house. Avery gains access to Stoic after requesting the agent in charge, Maxwell, to question Stoic about a case she is working on.
Once inside, Avery plucks the tooth out, but Stoic no longer has the file. However, neither Breznov nor the CIA believe her when she says Stoic did not have the file on him. With her husband’s life still on the line, Avery has nine hours to find the file and deliver it to Breznov.
Avery’s investigation leads her to believe that the CIA’s Deputy Director might have the file, and only top-level executives know of its presence. After trading information with a French agent, Avery learns the location of Deputy Director Evans and breaks into his room.
Avery tortures Director Evans to gain a password to his computer, but she cannot access the file since it is encrypted and needs to be opened in a secure server. Through the help of her only allies, Station Chief Hedlund and Sorina, a hacker, Avery manages to break into a secure government location, access the server room, and successfully decrypt and download the Canary Black file to an external drive.
What is the Canary Black File?
At first, Avery thinks that the Canary Black is a file containing blackmail materials on top government agents. However, after opening the file with Sorina’s help, Avery learns that the file is more deadly than simple blackmail.
It is a geo-targeted computer virus that can end the internet in a specific country, bringing a standstill. Someone in possession of the file can stop a country by targeting its banks, communication, government procedures, and financial markets and, by a touch of a button, cripple a country’s infrastructure.
Why did Breznov want the file?
Even after learning how deadly the file is, Avery still chooses to hand it over to Breznov in hopes of saving David. Once he got his hands on the program, Breznov used it to threaten the world leaders gathered at a Global Unification Summit into paying him a ransom of 1% of each country’s GDP, threatening to unleash the virus on any country that fails to pay.
As a demonstration, Breznov shut down Singapore, and he managed to force all nations represented at the summit to make payments. Other than using the program to make trillions, Breznov also planned to use the file to level the playing field by targeting the economic giants, including China, Russia, Germany, France, the UK, and the US.
He believed that these world superpowers used their influence to exert unfair power on smaller countries.
Does Avery save her husband?
Breznov not only takes the file but also takes Avery hostage. He did not plan to release David but to kill them. However, a mind-blowing twist goes against Breznov’s plans. It turns out that David is the ghostly assassin Kali, whom Avery has been chasing for years. The reason they were in the current predicament is that Breznov used David’s past misdemeanours to threaten him into agreeing to a fake kidnapping incident to make Avery steal the file for him.
However, David’s bottom line is that Breznov cannot kill Avery, so he turns against him in the end to save her. So technically, Avery does not save her husband, but he helps her take down Breznov and his henchmen in a ghastly shootout that leaves Breznov and all his men dead. When the CIA arrives at the scene after tracking Hedlung’s phone, David disappears by jumping through a window into the river.
How does Canary Black end?
CIA agents led by Deputy Director Evans and Agent Maxfield arrive at the scene after Avery and David have already dealt with Breznov and his men and stopped the release of the virus. Avery is arrested, but David escapes, and the CIA believes him dead.
Avery is taken back to the CIA for questioning, and the deputy director is set on trying her for treason and espionage. However, a mysterious woman, Elizabeth, working directly with the President of the United States, stops the questioning and recruits Avery to a newly formed super-secret government agency, MC6.
The movie ends with Avery taking a stroll down a familiar path she and David had taken at the beginning of the movie, which is where David had proposed. She finds her ring in one of the pillars, suggesting that David is still alive.