Carry-On movie review and movie summary (2024)

After months of poor season fare, there’s something so refreshing about the refined simplicity of the Netflix original “Carry-On.” Remember when Hollywood used to make action thrillers with one setting like a machine, often referred to by the shorthand “Die Hard on a ____” movie? They often led to guilty pleasures, but also legitimately well-made action movies like “Air Force One” (on a plane), “Speed” (on a bus) or “Under Siege” (on a ship). I’m not saying that the latest from Jaume Collet-Serra stands next to them, but it is so refreshingly no-nonsense that it has to recall an era when Hollywood films were less burdened by mythology or multiverse. It’s a bit too long and way too silly, but most people don’t care. And in a year with almost no even modestly good holiday offerings (sorry to the two “Red One” fans), this might be the best Christmas movie of the year. (Discuss among yourselves whether or not that gives it another “Die Hard” connection.)

“Carry-On” stars an effective Taron Egerton as a TSA agent named Ethan Kopek who becomes a key player in a terrorist plot. After too long, where we meet Ethan’s girlfriend Nora (Sofie Carson), who also works at the airport (of course), and discover that they are about to have a child, we join Ethan on one of the biggest travel days of the year: Christmas Eve. At work at a crowded security check-in, he is handed a cochlear and receives a text message ordering him to insert it. A stranger (Jason Bateman) instructs him that he will follow the instructions or Nora will die. All he has to do is put a bag through the X-ray machine without raising a red flag. It’s that simple. She lives if he looks the other way. Even though he knows it means hundreds of others will die.

The screenplay by TJ Fixman hinges on such a clever concept that it lifts so much of “Carry-On” above its uneven patches. It’s a classic “What would you do” scenario, a variation on the Trolley Problem really: Would you do something that got your partner, the mother of your child, killed if it meant saving hundreds of innocent lives? At first, Egerton, who can be such a charismatic actor in the right material, felt wrong. Yet he deliberately chooses to be understated, to let the action around him and the more exaggerated performances do the talking. It’s another surely underrated turn in the career of a remarkably consistent performer.

And talking they do. In a black coat and hat, Bateman makes a meal of his villainous role. I’d love to see him in more parts like this, knowing exactly the task and delivering it menacingly without being overly ostentatious. Collet-Serra rounds out the ensemble with excellent character actors, including Logan Marshall-Green, Theo Rossi, Dean Norris and a great turn from Danielle Deadwyler as the agent who begins to put all the pieces together. Does she do it in a way that radically challenges logical thinking? Of course. But we’ve become a culture that obsesses a little too much about that kind of narrative nitpicking through ranks for social influence. The truth is that almost all of the best action movies push logic aside a few times to get the job done, and Deadwyler does some really heavy lifting to hold some of the more extreme aspects of the film together. (Not more than in one insane action scene set to “Last Christmas” that made me laugh and gasp in equal measure.)

Collet-Serra has previously proven that he can do this kind of no-nonsense action in several of the better Liam Neeson films (“Run All Night”, “The Commuter”) and the thoroughly entertaining “The Shallows”. He was distracted by franchises a bit there with depressing misfires like “Jungle Cruise” and “Black Adam,” but he’s right back in his wheelhouse with “Carry-On,” a concept that serves as a showcase for his abilities. movies like this. It’s not just a dismal awards season that makes “Carry-On” refreshing, but an action movie marketplace that doesn’t understand how much audiences crave a simple plot done well. We were all tired of “Die Hard” rip-offs in the ’90s and ’00s. But maybe it’s time to let them board the culture plane again.

On Netflix now.