‘Carry-On’ Review: TSA Poster Boy Taron Egerton and an Evil Jason Bateman Ground Netflix’s Out-There Christmas Thriller
The sort of relatably flawed everyday hero who might have been played by Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis back in the ’80s, Ethan Kopek always wanted to be a cop. Instead, he’s working airport security — and not even the essential job of scanning passengers’ baggage for bombs. For the past three years, this dead-end TSA agent’s been stuck somewhere deep in the bowels of LAX airport, doing who knows what, dreaming of a promotion that will never come.
Dumb-fun Netflix potboiler “Carry-On” takes place on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest travel times of the year, and Ethan (Taron Egerton) has picked this moment to prove himself, begging his boss (a surly Dean Norris) to “put me on a machine.” Feeling generous, his supervisor agrees, but this is hardly Ethan’s lucky day. Within minutes of sitting down at the CT scanner, Ethan finds himself at the center of a low-stakes “Die Hard” knockoff: Someone is trying to smuggle a suitcase full of Novichok nerve agent onboard a crowded passenger flight, and they’ve picked Ethan as the weak link they can manipulate in order to get it past the checkpoint.
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Sometimes you see a high-concept Hollywood thriller whose core idea is so fresh and original, you marvel at the brain that came up with it. “Carry-On” is not that movie. Au contraire, T.J. Fixman (a writer on the “Ratchet & Clank” videogame series, penning his first non-“R&C” feature here) and director Jaume Collet-Serra (on familiar ground, following Liam Neeson thrillers “Unknown” and “Non-Stop”) start with a premise so banal you’ve probably imagined it yourself when going through airport security: How would a terrorist outsmart this system?
The movie’s answer is for evil men (including a ruthless killer played by an intriguingly cast Jason Bateman) to bully and threaten Ethan into following their commands. The excitement starts the moment he inserts a “lost” earpiece and hears Bateman’s voice issuing orders. In theory, it would be much easier to pressure one of the many other airport employees, who come and go through lower-security entrances every day. But the gimmick here is convincing a dedicated agent to override his duty, while giving the villains “Mission: Impossible”-level access to all of LAX’s surveillance cameras.
With more plot holes than this undercrowded airport has travelers, Fixman’s script needs us to believe just one thing: that Ethan is so dedicated to pregnant girlfriend Sofia Carson (Nora Parisi) that he’ll risk his job and the lives of everyone at LAX to prevent any harm from coming to her. Without spoiling the surprise, the film eventually reveals that another character is under the terrorists’ control, too — this one because the bad guys have taken their husband hostage. Screenwriters love to use that device (like the first time Jack Bauer’s daughter was kidnapped in “24” and he was ordered to assassinate the president), since it makes weapons of average people, inviting audiences to wonder: What would you do in their situation?
In the case of “Carry-On,” Ethan is both an ordinary guy given the opportunity to be a hero and an ordinary guy blackmailed into endangering everybody at LAX — a tense, internal tug-of-war that plays out in twitchy close-ups of Egerton’s strategically clenched jaw (ever noticed how, when posed just so, the geometric actor’s face suggests an octagon?). Here, he’s shot in that over-lit, optimized-for-streaming way where you can count practically every pore. As “Kingsman” proved, Egerton’s an appealing action star, whom this film gives multiple opportunities to do Tom Cruise-style sprints across the airport.
For Spanish director Collet-Serra, the project serves as a sleek, relatively down-to-earth reset after the bombast of “Black Adam,” while still providing a handful of spectacular set-pieces — none more astounding than the single-shot freeway sequence in which FBI agent Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) fights her way out of a speeding vehicle. Elena and the driver wrestle over a gun as the car smashes against obstacles on either side, all while traveling at 70 miles per hour.
Although Collet-Serra brings creative solutions to each of the action sequences, the project is actually most effective when audiences are honed in on the core characters. And because it’s Netflix, there’s nothing to stop you from shouting instructions at the screen anytime Ethan seems slow to make the right decision. Early on, Bateman’s character kills one of Ethan’s colleagues, effectively making the point that there are consequences any time he disobeys.
Hardly an obvious casting choice, Bateman may well be the film’s MVP, since he brings an unexpectedly likable dimension to the nameless psycho giving orders in Ethan’s ear — much nicer than the superficially similar control freak Kiefer Sutherland voiced in “Phone Booth.” Bateman plays it firm, yet friendly, such that we believe he could instantly develop a rapport with the man he’s remote-controlling, whereas Ethan’s strategy is to distract and stall while he tries to identify and eventually outsmart the perp.
Watching “Carry-On” on Netflix, you may actually take some pleasure in its preposterousness, which leaves ample room — in the form of long dialogue-free stretches, where Lorne Balfe’s generic score gives everything a made-for-TV feel — to provide sarcastic commentary from the family couch. If you’re traveling this Christmas, take pity on those TSA agents. And if you’re staying home, take comfort as “Carry-On” puts one through the ringer.
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