It’s the most wonderful time of the year! …Unless you’re traveling through LAX on Christmas Eve when a team of military contractors are planning on releasing a bioweapon that can kill thousands, then, maybe it isn’t. The Netflix original Carry-On is touting itself as 2024’s Christmas thriller-to-watch, supporting a talented cast of Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Dean Norris and Logan Marshall Green to name a few.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra’s latest shows us that while the occasional flight delay, security checkpoint mishap and lost boarding pass may cause a blue Christmas, things can always go from bad to worse – you could be hoisted into a life-or-death situation in which any wrong move gets someone or multiple people killed, then again, maybe a delayed flight doesn’t seem so bad.
Centered on Taron Egerton’s Ethan Kopek - an ambition-less TSA agent with no real career or life motivation or goals who has just discovered that he and his girlfriend, fellow airport employee Nora (Sofia Carson), are parents to be. However, the busiest travel day of the year takes a sharp nosedive when a mysterious voice starts giving him commands over a left behind earpiece at airport security. Instantly, Kopek is thrust into a world of domestic terrorism that threatens to destroy not only his life, but those closest to him if he makes even the simplest of wrong moves. Pressed against his history of underachievement, accompanied with his newly discovered future of fatherhood – Kopek decides that the job requirements of a TSA agent may also have to include being shot at, hand to hand combat, and being an on-call bomb technician to name a few – if he wants to truly save this airport and the thousands of people in it.
Taking a while to gain any real speed, accompanied by countless action thriller cliches and character choices devoid of any sort of logic, Carry-On is nothing new in the way of holiday action thrillers.
For me especially, a real sticking point for this film is Jason Bateman. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Bateman, Arrested Development and Ozark being his most notable and strongest roles of his career, but as a prime antagonist that is instantly supposed to be the most threatening character in the film? Forgive me Cotton McKnight, but I don’t see it. While Ozark may have been his career defining dramatic role, the transition to from financial advisor in over his head to Appalachian kingpin takes multiple seasons and episodes, time, which Carry-On does not give.
Unfortunately, the writing seems fairly lackluster as well, which coming from writer T.J. Fixman, in his first live-action feature film, is no surprise. Fixman, notable for writing six entries in the widely popular Ratchet & Clank video game series, produces something that falls flat and is grounded before it really ever has a chance to take off.
Carry-On really seems like a film 10-20 years too late, which when looking at Collet-Serra’s filmography (Run All Night, Non-Stop, Unknown) – we can see the remnants of the Liam Neeson post-Taken action renaissance still clinging on to life, mixed in with other airport thrillers of Christmas past, Flightplan and RedEye to name a couple.
Carry-On is now streaming everywhere on Netflix!
MPAA Rating: PG-13.
Runtime: 119 mins
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Writer: T.J. Fixman
Cast: Taron Egerton; Jason Bateman; Sofia Carson
Genre: Action | Crime
Tagline:
Memorable Movie Quote: "It's over, pal. It was over the minute I met you."
Distributor: Netflix
Official Site: https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/carry-on-taron-egerton-movie-info
Release Date: December 13, 2024
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: A mysterious traveler blackmails a young TSA agent into letting a dangerous package slip through security and onto a Christmas Eve flight.
