Netflix’s Clever Die Hard Clone

On December 15, 2024By Littum

Do you find your holiday season stressful? Thank you, Star of Bethlehem, that you’re not Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton), a hero in the delightfully unlikely new Netflix suspense thriller Carry-On. For starters, Ethan is a TSA agent, which means he endures abuse from impatient strangers for a living. It’s worse, of course, on one of the busiest travel days of the year at one of the busiest airports in the world, where Ethan finds himself at the start of Carry-On: December 24 at LAX. All of that would be enough to turn even the jolliest man into a certified Grinch, and it’s only the beginning of the Christmas nightmare that awaits Egerton’s beleaguered everyday when a mysterious terrorist begins whispering an ultimatum in his ear: Let a certain bag pass without a flag through security. or his loved ones will not come home for Christmas.

Chief among Ethan’s endangered loved ones is his newly pregnant wife, Nora (Sofia Carson), who also works at the airport—a job opportunity that dragged the couple across the country from New York to Los Angeles. If that particular plot detail doesn’t trigger a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Movies Past, then Egerton’s broad forehead and burly build should do the trick. Yes, Carry-On is made in the yippee ki yay spirit Die Hardanother festive action picture about a very ordinary guy who rises to face very extraordinary circumstances. And while this new film doesn’t quite reach the Nakatomi Plaza heights of that classic, it’s considerably more fun than Die Hard 2, which also happened to take place in a busy airport on Christmas Eve.

The film’s director, Spanish genre specialist Jaume Collet-Serra, carefully balances chaos and control over his scenario. For a while, Carry-On sticks close to its millennial John McClane wannabe; under the watchful eye of the bad guy who gives instructions through a cochlear, Ethan tries to think his way through an impossible situation. Can he use his smartwatch to send a message to the authorities? Maybe he can scribble it on a ticket with a counterfeit currency marker. Working from a clever script by TJ Fixman, Collet-Serra builds tension around the details (and specific headaches) of TSA security. Ethan’s melting pot is like a life-and-death perversion of any airport employee’s daily ordeal: He has to keep his cool even when tested travelers complain loudly about any delays and take out their frustrations on him.

A sympathy for working Americans is a hallmark of this director’s ongoing collaboration with Liam Neeson. In some ways, Carry-On functions as a holiday cousin to these films – politically aware thrillers like Non-Stop and The Commuter that make good use of contained settings and mobile technology. (Few filmmakers have found a more appealing way to visualize text messages.) Collet-Serra immediately warms us to Ethan’s workplace, painting the personalities of his soon-to-be-threatened colleagues (such as Breaking Bad‘s Dean Norris as a no-nonsense supervisor) in quick brushstrokes. Little details, like the way Ethan and Nora have to park and take a shuttle to their respective terminals, speak to an interest in getting the logistics of an airport right. And an entertaining early montage of various fliers throwing tantrums while wandering or waiting in line betrays where Collet-Serra’s allegiances lie.

The film derives most of its tension from the cat-and-mouse game between Egerton – who is much more likable and relatably confused here than he was in Kingsman movie—and a cast-against-type Jason Bateman, who plays (and initially only voices) the villain on the line. As in another thriller, The giftthe Arrested development the star leans on his talent for hostile sarcasm, in this case twisting the Gen X snarkiness of previous characters into a calm, dry menace. It’s exactly how you would imagine Hans Gruber if he was the fool Juno. Bateman is so good at going bad that it’s easy to forgive how transparently the script deploys him as a voice of negative reinforcement that helps push Ethan—who is floundering in a job he doesn’t want after failing to come into the police academy – against its full potential. potential. This believe-in-yourself arc is the corniest thing about Carry-On.

What’s new in the film rests on the details of Ethan’s predicament: how to stop a terrorist attack while chained to his grueling post at a CT scanner during a crowded holiday rush. Naturally, the tension falters a bit as the action opens up to other areas of the airport and Ethan begins to get more in touch with his inner Bruce Willis. Even then, however, Collet-Serra tackles the material with a muscular enthusiasm unusual for streaming distractions. There’s a frantic chase around a back room of baggage carousels that brings Pixar to mind, and a silly elaborate digital long take in which the regular detective character (Danielle Deadwyler, recently star of The Piano Lesson, a very different Netflix film ) fights for a gun in a car while “Last Christmas” blares merrily on the radio.

With its escalating complications and simple but potent premise, Carry-On is the kind of lean, efficient, low-key Hollywood crowd-pleaser that’s all too rare these days. It’s brain candy that doesn’t rot your brain. Also, consider it a Christmas present for any Die Hard fans in your life – even if the towering thrill ride from 1988 remains the gift that keeps on giving.

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