Movies have a strange power: They prepare us for worst-case scenarios which will never happen in our real lives. I know zombies aren’t real. I even know that the modern concept of the walking dead only dates back 56 years. But I also know exactly what I’m going to do when the zombie apocalypse breaks out. I know which windows to barricade first, and which common household items would make the best improvised weapon with a judicious application of duct tape (oh crap, I’m out of duct tape — to the hardware store!).
And I’m pretty sure I know what I’ll do if I ever get a mysterious note along with an earpiece, telling me to put it in my ear immediately, which happens to Taron Egerton in “Carry-On.” Someone’s probably about to threaten a family member and coerce me into doing something nefarious and I’m throwing that earpiece out the second I get it.
That’s not what happens in “Carry-On,” the latest in a long line of respectable, three-stars-or-better thrillers from director Jaume Collet-Serra. Serra directed six airport novel suspense yarns between 2009 and 2018, four of them starring Liam Neeson, with one of them taking place at an actual airport. While “Orphan” and “The Shallows” remain his best and tautest works, “Carry-On” is still a return to form. It’s a solid and absurd high-concept b-movie. It’d be the perfect matinee if Netflix released these kinds of movies in theaters. At least you can simulate the experience at home by watching it midday on the weekend.
Taron Egerton stars as Ethan Kopek, a Transportation Security Admission (TSA) worker at Los Angeles International Airport. He’s not good at his job. His dream of becoming a police officer fell apart, and he only got this gig to be closer to his girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson, “Purple Hearts”), who’s a manager at the fictional Northwind Airlines. She’s pregnant and it’s time for Ethan to finally step up. He asks his boss for a more important assignment, monitoring the x-ray machine that scans carry-on bags, and boy did he pick the wrong day to get ambitious.
It’s Christmas Eve, one of the most stressful travel days of the year, and that would be bad enough. But Ethan also unintentionally foiled the plans of an unnamed criminal mastermind, referred to as The Traveler, played by Jason Bateman. The Traveler needs to get a bag with something very terrible through airport security. He was going to kidnap Ethan’s co-worker’s family and force him to clear the package, but now Ethan’s got the gig. So the Traveler and his accomplice, played by Theo Rossi (“Emily the Criminal”), scramble and come up with a “Plan B.” They tell Ethan they’ll kill Nora if he doesn’t comply.
All Ethan has to do is… nothing. He just has to keep his mouth shut when a suitcase containing something awful rolls past his screen. While Ethan waits for this to happen — and waits, and waits, and waits — the Traveler speaks to him via the aforementioned earpiece, getting into his head, establishing their relationship and articulating the film’s very obvious themes.
It’s strange that when the plot kicks in, “Carry-On” suddenly stops dead. A noticeable chunk of the movie is just Taron Egerton at TSA check-in, talking to an off-screen Jason Bateman, waiting to do nothing. He tries to sneak messages to his co-workers but he’s stymied every time. It’s a repetitive and inert sequence that goes on so long that you might get a little paranoid and worry that this is it, this is the whole film.
Thank God that’s not true. When Ethan finally gets out of his chair for good, “Carry-On” kicks into high gear with a series of pulse-pounding suspense sequences that are either very clever, very silly or both. One of the biggest joys of a movie like “Carry-On” is imagining what you’d do in the same situation, trying to outsmart the killer and by extension, the filmmakers. Sometimes the movie is ahead of you, sometimes it zigs when you think it would zag, and sometimes the plot is just total nonsense. The characters are geniuses when it moves the plot forward. The characters are blisteringly incompetent when that moves the plot forward instead.
At least “Carry-On” has no pretensions. It’s a functional thriller that, after an early and unusually large speed bump, picks up the pace and moves so quickly you can only go along for the ride. Jaume Collet-Serra knows how to construct this kind of rollercoaster, steadily ratcheting up the tension and then sending the audience plummeting at top speed into excitement. A lot of “Carry-On” is a slightly above average b-movie, but every once in a while it kicks into such an incredibly high gear that it elicits an hysterical reaction. There are about two minutes in “Carry-On” that are as exciting as any other action movie this year, and about 100 minutes that are pretty fun too.
“Carry-On” is mostly a two-hander between Egerton, who wears anxiety well, and Bateman, who’s convincing as a professional monster. The supporting cast makes do with what little they have. Danielle Deadwyler does what she has to do in a mostly thankless role as a detective who gradually pieces the plot together, and Sofia Carson is hamstrung by odd dialogue that makes her character sound half-asleep for the first half of the movie. Not all the pieces come together. The mechanism works anyway.
When “Carry-On” gets off its butt and carries the hell on, it’s an enjoyable pulp thrill ride, a satisfying reminder of an era when these kinds of suspense flicks were a dominant force in the media and not just a throw-off holiday release on a streamer which is probably going to drop the film from their home page after a day or two. If you’ve ever said “They don’t make them like they used to,” but you were thinking about three-star thrillers like “Nick of Time” or “Red Eye” or “Non-Stop,” you have good taste. And you should probably watch “Carry-On.”
“Carry-On” is streaming on Netflix on Dec. 13.
Source link
