It's not quite the same as the one-location surrealist suspense of this year's Drop, but Carry-On exemplifies a close sibling of the subgenre: that of the borderline-absurdist (often holiday-related) terrorist thriller. More an update on Die Hard, or Flightplan for that matter, this Christmas release brings all the expected action and heart out of an impossible but highly entertaining story. Shockingly not released in cinemas during the post-awards season holiday audiences, Carry-On is a Netflix exclusive, one that would have been fun on a large screen but nevertheless manages to demand audience attention and reward it.
Jaume Collet-Serra belongs to a curious group of excellent but still comparably young genre filmmakers churning out movies with charming regularity, and clearly pulling directly from their favorite inspirations. Apart from his quartet of Liam Neeson-led action thrillers -- all of which are solid viewing choices, if somewhat indistinguishable, like The Commuter -- the Spanish director has handled some significant horror titles, including Orphan, The Shallows, and The Woman in the Yard, in addition to two major blockbusters belonging to important IPs: Black Adam for DC and Jungle Cruise for Disney. With all these, Collet-Serra staunchly resists excessive worldbuilding, extensive mythologies, and room for online forums to debate finer points of plot and theme. Lean and mean, straightforward thrills is his game, and he does it better than most these days.
Carry-On is clearly in the same vein as his Neeson thrillers, but this time it's Taron Egerton's vehicle for action stardom. And what a return to form it is for the hot young star, who steps into the role with capable aplomb and magnetic screen presence. Egerton plays Ethan, a TSA agent at LAX on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest days of the year; he has become stymied in his job, unmotivated to pursue promotions and seemingly content to be a grunt worker. When his pregnant girlfriend (Sofia Carson) who also works at the airport encourages him to reapply for his dream job at the police academy, he instead takes the initiative to prove to his boss (Dean Norris) that he can handle a more intensive job in the terminal: managing a baggage-scanning lane. It's not clear at first, but we learn Ethan has become quite cynical about law enforcement after he was rejected from the academy for concealing his father's criminal history. It's not a great backstory, and clearly forcefully arranged by writer T.J. Fixman to demonstrate daddy issues and an identity crisis, but little attention is paid to it by the film itself.
Thankfully, apart from this ham-fisted setup that overstays its welcome, the film proper kicks off when Ethan arrives on duty. After a somewhat miserable pep talk by the boss for their new shift, staffers take their positions as the onslaught of Yuletide travelers overwhelms the queue. Almost immediately, due to his eager offering, Ethan is put on a baggage scanner and slipped a mysterious earpiece, through which he is contacted by a terrorist. The stranger (Jason Bateman) quickly establishes dominance and consequence, proving that his no-nonsense plan is both imminent and irresistible. The unseen man has accomplices all over, and is nondescript himself, maneuvering literally behind the scenes to ensure that a certain piece of luggage bypasses the scanners without setting off any alarms. Ethan is in the undesirable position of ignoring whatever he sees on the scanner, though he has no idea exactly what or when or why this device is moving under his radar.
Despite its Christmas setting, there isn't a lot of festive material here, so debates about this film's holiday canonicity will surely continue, but the whole debacle is a ton of fun regardless. While the terrorists' plot is admittedly overwrought, the film doesn't provide clear answers until later, making the narrative plot compelling up to its third-act climax, when the head villain confronts Ethan in a closed terminal bathroom and they brawl. Up to that particular point, I had few issues with the film, despite occasional unlikelihoods that are frankly necessary for things to proceed. But, as with a Bond film, the villain's monologue revealing all conveniently provides annoying closure to the varied fraying threads, and I found it wildly out of character for the master manipulator, who is patently not a sociopath or mastermind, and rather merely a committed mercenary. After this point, the climax continues for an interminable stretch that involves a tarmac hijack and chase, Egerton leaping into a plane's undercarriage, and a sequence of fights that would better fit a Mission: Impossible entry than a realistic story about an average Joe saving the day.
The whole thing boils down to a sort of Trolley Problem: Ethan must decide whether he wants to save his pregnant girlfriend or everyone on a plane. When he makes his choice, the stakes are rearranged so that he must choose between his pregnant girlfriend and everyone in the airport. In a game like this, where consequences are constantly in flux -- at one point, it even becomes clear that a crucial politician is also in transit on the plane, and that she may be the true target -- the constant expository dialogue can become tiresome, as can legitimizing each new turn of the screw. Yet Egerton and the cast -- especially the typically sardonic, condescending Bateman -- remain consistently understated, a brave and smart acting choice in a flick like this that can so easily be played broadly and falsely.
And all this is not to mention the rest of the film, which includes a bizarre and impossible -- but genuinely delicious -- subplot of Danielle Deadwyler as an LAPD detective piecing together disparate elements of the terrorist plot and attempting to intervene from the outside, along with DHS agent Logan Marshall-Green. It's weird and off-putting, but the considerable talents of these actors make it work, along with a strange and vicious fight in a speeding car. And it's within such sequences that we understand the absurd project at work: when you're laughing and choking in equal measure at insane action scenes, the movie has you hooked, and it earns its laurels. This isn't John Wick; it's violent, yes, but also silly. Carry-On might not be in my annual holiday watchlist, but I look forward to another screening already.
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