Jaune Collet-Serra (Orphan, Unknown, Non-Stop) directs this screenplay by T.J. Fixman about a mysterious terrorist known only as Traveler (Justin Bateman) who blackmails LAX TSA agent Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) into allowing a dangerous suitcase through security and onto a Christmas Day flight. If he doesn’t, Traveler promises to kill Ethan’s pregnant girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson). (119 min.)
Glen: Christmas terrorists? A hero scrambling to save the day? A romantic partner in peril? Cheeky jokes colliding with action sequences? Carry-On clearly wants to be Die Hard, but it’s not. Instead, it’s an implausible and byzantine story about a conspiracy to pass an unpopular piece of legislation by staging a terrorist attack using Russian-made Novichok nerve agent to target the bill’s author, Congresswoman Grace Turner (Jill Flint). Her bill would benefit arms dealers, so counterintuitively, the gunrunners think murdering her in a faked Russian terrorist attack will generate sympathy and make her bill pass instead, bringing them a windfall. Just writing that nonsense was painful.
Anna: No one is more willing to cozy up and watch terribly great Christmas movies than me, but I would call this Christmas-adjacent. While there may be baubles baubling and bells a-ring-ching-chingalinging, there isn’t much Christmas here. It’s the wrapping paper on the gift of a pretty terrible action rom-com. Kopek failed cop academy and seems stuck in the rut of a boring day-to-day job with TSA, while his girlfriend holds a position of more importance and would love to see Kopek follow a dream instead of sitting in the humdrum of day-to-day normalcy. It’s banal bullshit, but the film tries in earnest to keep its audience interested. Unfortunately, I just kept seeing plot holes left and right, but at least in the end (spoiler alert) the good guy prevails. It’s not a complete waste of time, but I recommend hitting the eggnog before you press play. This one benefits from a fuzzy sense of reality.
Glen: Spoiler alert, eh? Was the hero’s triumph ever in doubt? Ethan’s cop-dreams backstory adds a little interest to the proceedings. Can he redeem himself, save the day, and be found worthy to wear a badge. LAPD Detective Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) hears about the Novichok on a wiretap and learns Ethan tried to contact the police, so she shows up and butts heads with Ethan. Will she realize Ethan’s worth? It’s all very predictable. Maybe you and I are missing something because this film has—to my mind—an improbably high critics score of 86 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t get the appeal. Maybe it’s because Bateman is playing against type, or maybe critics see something in Egerton’s performance that I’m missing. It’s all rote, by-the-numbers, phone-it-in, standard-issue, straight-to-video action pablum, but hey, if you have Netflix and a couple of hours to burn, and don’t mind plot holes big enough to drive a Mack Truck through, settle in and enjoy this Die Hard-lite.
Anna: Bateman has proven himself to be a worthy on-screen bad guy in recent years, but we barely get to interact with him beyond his voice via earbud for at least half of the film. It all is just so ridiculous, and I’m OK with ridiculous, but this just didn’t hit for me. I’ll choose Die Hard anytime, all the time over this. The actors did fine, the direction was fine, but the story was just plain unbelievable. Maybe folks are more forgiving than we are at the holidays, but this one isn’t going to make its way into our yearly rotation, I can guarantee that.
New Times Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey and freelancer Anna Starkey write Sun Screen. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Dec 19-29, 2024.