Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast: Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler, Jason Bateman
Rating: (PG-13)
★★★+
REVIEWED BY AMASIO JUTEL
Festive cop-aganda in the vein of Die Hard, Carry-On (Netflix) is the straight-to-streaming Christmas action movie you didn’t know you needed this holiday season.
Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton), a failed cop-turned-TSA agent, is given a promotion at work, monitoring the bag check at an LAX terminal on Christmas Eve. On his first day, he comes across an earpiece with a mysterious voice (Jason Bateman) blackmailing him into smuggling Russian chemical weapons through airport security. If he does not, his partner Nora (Sofia Carson) will be executed.
While Ethan defuses the intense situation, Detective Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) follows a series of clues that entangle her in the puzzle. The conflicting performances of Egerton’s “determined to do good” attitude and Bateman’s cunning ruthlessness, always a step ahead of the TSA agent, make for an enthralling high-stakes, cat-and-mouse action movie.
For as expansive a setting as a single location thriller can get — LAX — the film does an excellent job orienting the viewer with Ethan, manoeuvring the airport without getting lost in it (as one might do in real life), keeping the stakes high as Ethan must “carry on” his mission of preventing the titular carry-on from reaching its target, all while keeping Nora out of harm’s way.
Beyond compelling performances and gripping narrative, the straight-to-streaming moments of cheap CGI are complemented by cheesy Christmas music; one fight scene literally scored to Wham’s Last Christmas.
Carry-On knows exactly what it is, a thrilling, low-rent, law enforcement propagandistic (take this with a grain of salt), post-9/11 reinterpretation of Die Hard, with the takeaway that we ought to be nicer to airport security.