‘Carry-On’ Review (Netflix)
Stars: Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Danielle Deadwyler, Dean Norris, Sofia Carson | Written by T.J. Fixman | Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Despite the title, Carry-On has nothing to do with the popular series of saucy British comedies. Instead, it’s a pacy and enjoyable straight-to-Netflix airport thriller, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Maybe you could call it Carry On Die Hard 2, if you were feeling jovial, but it takes itself too seriously (in a good way) to really merit that joke.
Set on Christmas Eve, Carry-On stars Taron Egerton as Ethan Kopek, a Homeland Security employee who’s just found out his longtime girlfriend-slash-senior colleague Nora is pregnant with their first child. Spurred into wanting to step up, he asks his boss (Dean Norris) for a promotion, which is how he finds himself operating an airport X-ray machine when a master criminal known as The Traveler (Jason Bateman) puts his evil plan into action.
Communicating via an earpiece, The Traveler tells Ethan that Nora will be killed unless he lets a suitcase filled with deadly cargo through security. With the clock ticking, Ethan enters a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with The Traveler, while trying to secretly alert the authorities to the enormous danger.
Collet-Serra’s previous genre outings include Orphan and The Shallows, so he knows a thing or two about generating suspense and tension, and he gets a lot of mileage out of a relatively simple set-up. To that end, the script contains enough twists and turns to keep things interesting, despite the occasional plausibility issue, such as the fact that Ethan seems to be able to take an unreasonably large number of breaks for someone having their first day on the X-ray machine.
The performances are a lot of fun. Egerton gives good everyman, and he has the physicality for the part – so much so that you wonder why no-one tells him off for running in the airport. However, the stand-out is Bateman, who abandons his usual deadpan sardonic screen persona in favour of something genuinely chilling.
There’s also strong support from rising star Danielle Deadwyler, who gets to do her own share of the action as an FBI agent on the trail of the deadly package, and from the increasingly ubiquitous Josh Brener as her tech-savvy colleague. In addition, Norris is good value as Ethan’s boss, and the script gives Carson a bit more to do than the standard girlfriend role usually demands.
Collet-Serra keeps things moving at a decent pace throughout, and he orchestrates some impressive action set-pieces. Highlights include an exciting, nicely staged fight in a moving car, and a tense punch-up on the luggage conveyor belts.
In fairness, there are certain elements to The Traveler’s master plan that don’t entirely make sense (there’s a late-arriving second package that’s laugh-out-loud silly), but that just ends up being part of the fun.
In short, Carry-On is highly entertaining switch-off-your-brain thriller that’s pleasingly old-fashioned. And it’s a Christmas movie too, just like Die Hards 1 and 2. Happy holidays.
**** 4/5
Carry-On is available to watch on Netflix now.
