He is not the kind of hero with flaws who could have been played by Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis back in the 80s. Ethan Kopek instead wanted to be a cop back then, the average everyday citizen. Now he’s working airport security and it isn’t even that crucial as searching passengers’ bags for bombs. For three years now this dead-end TSA officer has been marooned somewhere deep inside LAX airport doing God knows what waiting for that promotion that won’t ever come.
On Christmas Eve, the busiest travel time of the year, Netflix potboiler Carry-On is just as dumb-fun as its name implies. The main character is Ethan (played by Taron Egerton) who in this defining moment at his work place pleads with his supervisor (a grumpy boss played by Dean Norris) “put me on a machine.” This Ethan’s fortune however does not last because he has been unlucky. In less than five minutes while on CT scanner, it turns out that Ethan gets stuck in what can only be referred to as a cheap version of “Die Hard”: there’s an individual planning to take his/her suitcase loaded with Novichok nerve agent through multiple international borders in a crowded airliner, and for no apparent reason they picked out Ethan as their weakest link to bypass all the security checks through manipulation.
Sometimes a Hollywood high concept movie gets made with a highly original central idea that leaves you gawping at the mind from which it was spawned. This is not “Carry-On.” On the contrary, T.J. Fixman (a writer on the “Ratchet & Clank” videogame series, penning his first non-“R&C” feature here) and director Jaume Collet-Serra (on familiar ground, following Liam Neeson thrillers “Unknown” and “Non-Stop”) start off with a premise so mundane that you might have had it as well when going through airport security: How could terrorists beat this system?
The villains provide the solution in this movie (including an interestingly cast Jason Bateman as a ruthless killer), where they intimidate Ethan into doing their bidding. One second later he slips in a misplaced earpiece and hears Bateman’s voice giving orders. In fact there are many other airport personnel who could be similarly pressured since they come through less secure entrances every day. Thus, though the trick lies in getting one committed agent to defy his duty while giving bad guys Mission Impossible access to LAX’s security cameras watching everything.
With more plot holes than this at an airport so crowded that it has too many travelers, Fixman’s script needs us to believe one thing: Ethan is willing to risk his job and everyone’s life at LAX by preventing Sofia Carson from being harmed in any way. Without giving away the surprise, the movie eventually reveals that another character is under terrorists’ control too one who they have taken her husband as a hostage. Screenwriters love using that device (like when Jack Bauer was first kidnapped with his daughter in “24” and then told he had to kill a president), because it makes weapons out of common people, allowing the audience to wonder what would you do if you were in their place?
In Carry-On, Ethan is just an average man who gets chance to be a hero as well as an average man coerced into putting every person at LAX at risk a tense internal conflict which we see unfolding through twitchy close-ups of Egerton’s clenched jaw strategically positioned (ever considered why an actor’s face like geometric when put in a particular angle suggests an octagon?). In this case, he appears shot like that for streaming purposes- over-lit optimized such that almost every port can be counted.
This film, like “Kingsman”, proves that Egerton is an attractive action star and gives him a few chances to do Tom Cruise-style airport sprints.
For Spanish director Collet-Serra, the project is a stylish but somewhat tame return to earth after “Black Adam,” complete with a handful of incredible set-pieces none more impressive than the one-take freeway sequence in which Danielle Deadwyler’s FBI agent Elena Cole fights her way out of a moving car. At 70 miles per hour, Elena and the driver clash over a gun as it crashes into obstacles on either side.
Even though Collet-Serra has some creative answers for every action sequence, this project shines best when it focuses on its most important characters. Since Netflix allows you to yell instructions at Ethan when he moves too slowly to do the right thing. One of Ethan Hunt’s colleagues gets killed by Bateman’s character early on to underscore that there are consequences any time he defies orders.
Hardly a logical selection, Bateman might just be the film’s standout performer; he brings out an unexpectedly likeable side in the anonymous psycho who issues instructions into Ethan’s ear so much better than Kiefer Sutherland voicing apparently similar control freak character in “Phone Booth.” Bateman is tough but friendly, suggesting that he could easily strike up a relationship with the man he is controlling remotely while Ethan tries to distract and stall for time as he figures out how to identify and eventually beat the perp.
When you come across it on Netflix, Carry-On may just make you happy because of its absurdity; this leaves enough space through long dialogue-free stretches, where Lorne Balfe’s generic score comes off as television made to allow for ironic comments from the family sofa. If you’re flying away this Christmas, spare some sympathy for those TSA agents. Or if you’re staying at home, find solace in your misery as “Carry-On” puts one through the wringer.
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