Low-key: Jaume Collet-Serra is one of the better working genre directors of the day, and Carry-On (now on Netflix) might be his best film yet. Here’s hoping he’s done taking big-studio paychecks for bland franchise junk (see: Black Adam, Jungle Cruise) and back to making rock-solid thrillers like Blake-Lively-watch-out-for-that-shark! movie The Shallows and Liam Neeson vehicles Unknown and Non-Stop, all of which have their place in the pantheon of well-directed escapist entertainment. Carry-On stars Taron Egerton, who’s low-key one of the more charismatic actors of the day (see Tetris, Rocketman), here playing a TSA agent who’s having one hell of a tense Christmas thanks to a terrorist played by an extra-steely Jason Bateman. Collet-Serra’s are the types of movies that we have routinely low expectations for, but more often than not find ourselves pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable they are.
The Gist: Airport employees surely dread Christmas: Thousands of stressed-out travelers aiming to spread holiday cheer somewhere else, but absolutely not doing so while sweating in long lines and getting their personal belongings rummaged through. Ethan Kopek (Egerton) is on the frontlines of all this angst. He’s an LAX TSA agent propped in front of a terminal, X-raying everyone’s unmentionables and absorbing their frustration. It’s a living, although his dream of being a cop was derailed when he flunked out of the academy. He might have motivation to try again, though – his gift under the tree this year is a positive pregnancy test. His partner Nora (Sofia Carson) is thrilled at the thought of having a baby bump. Isn’t that sweet? She works in the airport too, as a managerial type with a radio. One foresees a very happy growing family in their future – IF they manage to live through this Christmas. Which isn’t a given.
And no, I’m not saying hey brain aneurysms can happen to anyone totally outta nowhere or something like that. Rather, this is a movie directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, so the threat to their lives will be rather extraordinary. Here’s what happens – or a small chunk of what happens, anyway, since we don’t want to get all spoilery and ruin any Xmas surprises: Ethan’s eyes are glazed over looking at laptops and shampoo and dildos and all that stuff on the monitor when he comes across an earpiece like all the OPS types (you know, black OPS, special OPS, and all the others OPS) in movies use for hands-free communication, then gets an anonymous text urging him to stick it in his orifice or else. He does, even though we’re yelling at the screen for him to not do it. I mean, it can’t be hygienic. He doesn’t even swab it with a wet wipe or anything. Ick!
That’s far from a concern once Jason Bateman’s Voice (the character is “the Mysterious Traveler” in the credits) speaks into Ethan’s earhole that there’s a sniper trained on dear sweet Nora’s noggin and she’ll get kerpowwed if Ethan doesn’t let one specific bag slide through security. I guess his thankless job just got extra thankless, and his subsequent terminal turmoil involves a variety of side players: His grumpy boss (Dean Norris), the best friend (Sinqua Walls) who Ethan has to betray to follow through with the scheme, a hacker/sniper creep (Theo Rossi) in a van in the airport parking lot and, most importantly, the police cop (Danielle Deadwyler) who’s investigating some peripheral criminal activity that eventually points her to the nastiness going down at LAX. Christmas is clearly no concern for chaos, which forever and ever reigns!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: You got your Die Hard 2 tarmac action, you got your Die Hard Christmas-action-movie action, you got your Non-Stop passenger-plane action and you got your The Terminal and What Happens Later airport-restaurants-and-lines-and-waiting-areas action.
Performance Worth Watching: I’m torn between Egerton’s desperate-but-steady intensity and Bateman’s flavorful and chewy turn as the reprehensible villain. Both are excellent.
Memorable Dialogue: This is exactly the kind of movie featuring breathless exhortations like “So you expect me to risk a plane full of people because your boyfriend definitely says he can defuse a bomb mid-flight?”
Sex and Skin: Sorry, the conception of the aforementioned fetus happened prior to the events we witness in the movie.
Our Take: Carry-On stares directly at an opportunity to engage in some commentary about political corruption and domestic terrorism, then turns away – and we should be relieved. It has absolutely nothing to say about anything of any import and therefore is focused on holding us in its immediate visceral grip, and is all the better for it. Collet-Serra is interested in winding us up tight and keeping us in the moment, experiencing this keenly choreographed exercise in protracted tension.
But, I can hear you asking, is it ridiculous? Of course it is. Ree-dick-lee-us. How so? It blindside-Whams us with a deranged “Last Christmas”’” needle-drop during an unhinged action sequence that’ll have you hooting like a chimp in a banana factory, that’s how. To say it tests plausibility is a gross understatement, but you’ll be too glute-clenchy, and laughing too hard, to care. Collet-Serra and screenwriter T.J. Fixman conjure up a little airport anxiety – its most relatable human emotion – then light a fuse beneath it and let the fireworks pop. There’s nothing more to Carry-On than that, absolutely to its benefit.
Our Call: Collet-Serra should make a franchise out of this: Sequels could be Checked Bags (man in earpiece says there’s a bomb in the cargo hold) or Two Additional Personal Items (man in earpiece says there’s a bomb in either the laptop case or fanny pack, now which is it?) or Farts on a Plane (man in earpiece says if you don’t hold it in, the methane will make the plane explode). Opportunities abound! STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.