CARRY-ON - Mark Reviews Movies

Carry-On, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 13, 2024

The stakes, action, and, yes, absurdity of Carry-On keep escalating, until it seems as if screenwriter T.J. Fixman must be sure to lose the momentum or the believability—or both of these elements—of his plot. The good thing about a well-crafted thriller is that believability almost stops mattering at a certain point, as long as the film convinces us by the sheer force of its momentum not to think of such a pointless thing as logic.

Could what happens in this film actually happen in real life? If you're asking that question with any bit of sincerity while watching a TSA agent in an increasingly complicated and violent battle of wits with an anonymous villain with a dastardly plan, you might be better suited to more practical matters than the movies.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra's film is a very ridiculous affair, indeed, and it knows that fact, embraces it fully, and somehow finds ways to become sillier and, with the tone and approach solidified early, more entertaining as it progresses. The filmmaker is something an expert on these high-concept thrillers, and this is certainly one of his better exercises in making a ludicrous concept seem smarter than it probably is by way of the craftmanship on display. There are multiple working parts here—from a sizeable cast, to a couple of subplots, to different types of action, to the logistics of having it be set at an airport on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Collett-Serra makes the juggling of them appear easy and seamless.

The basics of the plot have Ethan (Taron Egerton), a TSA agent at Los Angeles International Airport, find an earpiece and receive a text message instructing—no, demanding—that he put it in his ear. The voice on the other end tells the guy, currently working a luggage scanner at a security checkpoint, to allow one particular carry-on suitcase go through to the terminal. If the agent doesn't, the man on the other side of the conversation will order someone to shoot Ethan's girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson), who's also working at the airport.

It's that simple, really, although describing it that way might only be relative. There's a lot more going on in the background, along the sides, off in some other parts of the city, and in Fixman's determination to keep adding complication after complication, while also giving our hero and the villain more and more to do than talk to each other.

Some of the less complex ones include that it's Christmas Eve, meaning that tensions are already high and a lot of people are distracted, and that Nora has just told Ethan she's pregnant as his early Christmas gift. He'd love and want to protect his girlfriend from the sniper the caller has set up in the parking garage across from the airport if she wasn't pregnant, of course, but it just adds to that sense of how perilous the scenario is and how desperate Ethan is in the midst of it.

It's really a moral dilemma for the guy, since he doesn't know what the anonymous caller wants, what's in the suitcase, and, if he does what he's being forced to do, whether or not he can trust the man to let him and Nora go in the first place. By the way, the villain, credited only as the Traveler, is played by Jason Bateman, whose signature deadpan sarcasm is utilized here to surprisingly chilling effect. He makes all of this—Ethan's crisis of conscience, the possibility of murdering a pregnant woman, the actual plan that's behind his demands—seem like a mild inconvenience, because he has a job to do and all these ordinary folks, with their human values and personal attachments, are just in the way.

Egerton is much more than effective in his role, too, as Ethan stews at his post, while trying to make it seem to everyone around him—including Nora, his boss (played by Dean Norris), and a bunch of fellow TSA agents, especially the very suspicious Alcott (Logan Marshall-Green), who are specifically looking for problems—that nothing is wrong. Eventually, he starts working on his own schemes to outsmart the Traveler. The villain, of course, is a few steps ahead of him, and once Ethan starts to figure out how the bad guy is ahead and how to get around that, the Traveler adapts, leading Ethan to do the same.

The specifics of how that happens here—and keeps happening, as one leaped obstacle or solved crisis transforms into another—should be discovered, of course. It is impressive, though, how Fixman and Collet-Serra eventually use more of their location, which seems so restricted and claustrophobic initially but expands to cover the entirety of the airport and beyond, and make good use of their supporting cast of characters. Some of those include Danielle Deadwyler's Det. Cole, who stumbles upon the Traveler's plot and gets into a brutal fight inside a speeding car, and Theo Rossi's creepy Watcher, who has the rifle and a seemingly random hostage, and the carry-on suitcase's handler, played by Tonatiuh.

The third act revolves more around action than suspense, which might be disappointing if not for how much variety there is in that action, as well as how the filmmakers use various locales at, around, and outside the airport to complement it. Carry-On becomes a rush of skillful filmmaking, convoluted but still grounded plotting, and some ingenuity in how these characters, as well as the film itself, adapt to the ever-changing stakes and complications.

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