McKay Daines

(On TV, April 2020) Any movie that plays on Canada’s APTN has some kind of Native-American connection, and so I perhaps expected a bit too much out of Shadow Wolves. It does start promisingly by presenting a fictionalized version of the authentic Shadow Wolves law enforcement unit operating in the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona. A First Nations action movie? Sure, at least at first when it introduces the anti-smuggling and tracking operations of the unit. It feels slightly different from the usual straight-to-video low-budget action films, with just enough specific atmosphere to keep things interesting. Alas, that feeling doesn’t last: Before long, the story gets going in a far more familiar direction—an alliance between terrorists and narcotraficantes out of right-wing fever dreams (oh no, nuclear bomb!), plus a designated (white) protagonist coming from outside the Shadow Wolves group and an England-based subplot. It quickly becomes far less interesting than promised—whatever distinctive traits the film could have developed are slowly strangled by the clichés of low-budget DTV action films. As part of that subgenre, Shadow Wolves slightly exceeds expectations in matter of pure execution: writer-director McKay Daines is a better director than writer, and he gets good production values and mildly effective action scenes out of his budget. Alas, the script does feel like a contractually obligated action film, and it forgets what it could be doing by focusing on Indigenous-led action. Sure, having Graham Green in a supporting role is always cool (and the actresses do look nice) but it’s not enough. Too bad—Shadow Wolves could have been quite a bit better had it played on its titular distinctiveness.