Carry-On (2024)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
An airport security officer races to outsmart a mysterious traveler forcing him to let a dangerous item slip onto a Christmas Eve flight.
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But if Carry-On works, it's because Ethan is an everyday person in the same way John McClane was an everyday guy in the first three Die Hard movies.
Taron Egerton would no doubt very much appreciate it if you would take the bait and compare his new, holiday-adjacent Netflix action thriller Carry-On to Die Hard … or perhaps Die Hard 2, actually.
When Nora further urges him to give his dream another shot, Ethan decides to try putting more effort into his life by petitioning his boss, Phil (Dean Norris), for a more important shift working baggage inspection on Christmas Eve.
Carry-On does not, in other words, find Ethan at the same point in his life that Die Hard finds John McClane.
With its confined setting and Christmas trimmings, Carry-On’s obvious genre reference point is the Die Hard franchise, though its slack pacing means that even Renny Harlin’s workmanlike yet enjoyable Die Hard 2 looks like a masterpiece by comparison.
Working from an assured screenplay by T.J. Fixman (Ratchet & Clank), Collet-Serra (Black Adam, The Shallows) crafts a satisfying surveillance thriller reminiscent of Eagle Eye (2008) and Phone Booth (2002). Like Shia LaBeouf’s Jerry, Michelle Monaghan’s Rachel and Colin Farrell’s Stuart, Egerton’s Ethan finds himself under the control of an anonymous extortioner. (The instructions come to Ethan through a tiny earpiece dropped off by a random traveler.)
While its debt to titles like Die Hard and the Shane Black-penned Lethal Weapon is made immediately clear, Carry-On lacks the extra edge of precision and the movie star-level charisma that elevated those titles beyond simple action-movie fare and into genre classics.
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It is a familiar premise, reminding you of a film such as Red Eye featuring Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams.
That’s right: Our hero is a TSA screener at a major L.A. airport, effectively giving him more in common with Lil Rel Howery’s Get Out character than he does with John McClane–again, largely minus the charisma. Ethan Kopek is a mid-30s slacker, disinterestedly coasting in his pat-down, metal detector job for several years after bombing out of his dream of completing the police academy.
It’s a marked contrast from, say, the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, a film so dripping in chaos and tension that it felt like being trapped inside someone else’s anxiety attack.
This is a fine return to form for director Collet-Serra, who’s back to making the kind of out-there action-thrillers he became known for with Liam Neeson vehicles like Unknown, Run All Night and the similarly air travel themed Non-Stop.
Jaume Collet-Serra, the master of the mass transit thriller, heads back to the airport for the first time in a decade with Carry-On, which trades Non-Stop’s midair mystery for a tour through the nightmare of Los Angeles International Airport security during the Christmas rush.
Collet-Serra, meanwhile, brings the same economical direction to Carry-On that he has employed in previous thrillers like The Shallows and Non-Stop.
As director Jaume Collet-Serra (Non-Stop, The Shallows, Jungle Cruise) has often proved, he’s quite dexterous at keeping a lid on things, but has a shakier pair of hands when flinging caution to the wind.
Collet-Serra, meanwhile, continues the slick, Tony Scott-lite style he brought to his earlier thrillers, and Carry-On could almost be considered a close relative of similar transport-based films like Non-Stop (Neeson on a plane) and The Commuter (Neeson on a train).
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This is a fine return to form for director Collet-Serra, who’s back to making the kind of out-there action-thrillers he became known for with Liam Neeson vehicles like Unknown, Run All Night and the similarly air travel themed Non-Stop.
Collet-Serra has proven he can do this kind of no-nonsense action before in several of the better Liam Neeson films (“Run All Night,” “The Commuter”) and the thoroughly enjoyable “The Shallows.”
Working from an assured screenplay by T.J. Fixman (Ratchet & Clank), Collet-Serra (Black Adam, The Shallows) crafts a satisfying surveillance thriller reminiscent of Eagle Eye (2008) and Phone Booth (2002). Like Shia LaBeouf’s Jerry, Michelle Monaghan’s Rachel and Colin Farrell’s Stuart, Egerton’s Ethan finds himself under the control of an anonymous extortioner. (The instructions come to Ethan through a tiny earpiece dropped off by a random traveler.)
The film is as fiercely economical as Collet-Serra’s best work, namely The Shallows. It wastes little time telling you everything you need to know about Ethan within minutes: Expecting his first child with his partner Nora (Sofia Carson), the man expresses anxiety about not being able to provide for them, even as his lack of ambition keeps him at the entry level of a job he once expected to use to leapfrog to the police force and toward a higher salary and better benefits.
Collet-Serra, meanwhile, brings the same economical direction to Carry-On that he has employed in previous thrillers like The Shallows and Non-Stop.
But perhaps it’s less of a sanctuary and more of a regroup and rethink because “Carry On” is easily Collet-Serra’s best film, or at least, his best since “The Shallows.”
…it rivals “The Shallows” as the most satisfying thing he’s made to date.