Carry-On Is The Trashy-Fun Netflix Actioner Done Right

IT'S BEEN A WHILE since director Jaume Collet-Serra made a ‘good bad film’. He represents a very specific B-movie oeuvre — corny but well-made, perversely enjoyable thrillers. He’s a modern-day Tony Scott, if you may. Cue Liam Neeson’s trashy-action face in Non-Stop and Run All Night. Cue Paris Hilton’s horror face in House of Wax. Or Blake Lively’s shark-survivor face in The Shallows. But his two collaborations with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (Jungle Cruise, Black Adam) were good bad movies without the good. The streak ends now. Carry-On is Collet-Serra’s return to form — his first truly entertaining and wholesome B-thriller since 2016. Imagine a Netflix-coded baby of Phone Booth (2002) and Red Eye (2005). It’s the Christmas movie we need. The budget ingredients: a packed American airport, holiday season, a smooth villain, a plane and nerve gas situation, a lot of sprinting, and a jaded hero. 

Taron Egerton stars as Ethan Kopek, a mediocre and low-level TSA officer at LAX airport. His gorgeous and unnaturally understanding girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) — who’s an airline manager — is pregnant, so Ethan feels like he needs to step it up and stop being a loser. He asks his boss for a promotion that morning, and as luck would have it, he’s put on the security detail at the luggage belt. The ‘machine’ is a step up from the frisking and scanning he usually does. All is well, until he receives a ear piece and a phone call from a mysterious man (Jason Bateman in the most Jason Bateman role possible) — who identifies as a “freelance facilitator” — that changes his life. The man blackmails Ethan into waving through a lethal chemical weapon in a suitcase. Obviously, the bag will go to one of the flights with a politician on it. Parallely, an LAPD officer named Elena (Danielle Deadwyler) discovers a couple of Russian bodies and races against time to decode this deadly plot. Their paths are destined to cross. 

Carry-On does well with its micro-plotting — the ticking-bomb nature of moments and little plot twists. Like, for instance, Ethan’s scramble to be put back in charge when he’s reassigned to another area; he finds himself having to betray a friend to ‘rescue’ him from being a target. Or Ethan’s moral and physical struggle with the passenger who's carrying the bag. He has to continue letting people down (even being responsible for a death or two) in order to save the day, which, in true action-movie style, makes the payoff much sweeter. Of course, the film has to bend over backwards and enter clown territory to give Ethan the save-the-day and redemption arc — which means that serious-looking cops and FBI folks have to step back, defy a history of training and say “Sure go ahead, Mr. Loser, we trust you”. But what’s a fun Hollywood actioner without the tacky stuff? To offset that, there’s a one-take combat scene in a moving (and spiralling) car on the Los Angeles freeway — a bit of gimmickry and craft never hurts. 

Also, movies set in airports are rarely boring. There’s something about the energy and the design — where so many emotions are running high; where so many stories and beginnings and ends are colliding — that makes it hard to resist. Throw in a new perspective (the TSA routine), the thrill of set pieces happening in BTS corners and invisible parts of an airport, and the fact that Jason Bateman stops being a voice on the phone barely 30 minutes in, and Carry-On nails the mainstream formula without being too kitschy. The clunky motives and backstory of the baddies rarely matter when the narrative momentum is right. Even when things get ridiculous, the sheer commitment to the setting rescues the film from blowing itself up. 

A lot of this is down to the way the shapeless Taron Egerton plays Ethan. At first, he looks awkward, almost unexpressive and uncomfortable in a straight-laced role. But Egerton does more with this muted masculinity. He’s no Ethan Hunt; he panics and vomits under pressure, stumbles and even cries and pleads at one point. Whenever he does something brave, it’s against all odds and instincts — you can tell that he has to summon every ounce of smartness in his situation. His battle is to actually only be better than average and unambitious (“dreams have an expiration date”), to get out of his funk, so strivers like him can’t really tell the difference between being heroic or just being functional. He’s just trying to do more than the bare minimum, and the threat of losing his girlfriend (and perhaps a plane full of innocent passengers) forces him to be the reluctant chosen one. There’s always a sense that Ethan isn’t in control — which is the theme of his character, and something the mean villain often taunts him about. Their conversations naturally unfold like glorified therapy sessions, so that we know enough about Ethan and what it takes for him to be a Liam Neeson type. Egerton’s perpetually anxious face does wonders for the texture of his heroism. 

What his performance also does is allow the film to not dwell on the payoffs and resolutions. When we see a man go through hell and back — and save America in the process — we anticipate the joy of watching him lauded and celebrated at the end. Carry-On has more of a cutesy ending because Ethan had to feature in an action movie to become a rom-com star of sorts. His transformation is rooted in how he becomes a better man, not a cooler or stronger one. The sequel would even belong to a different genre altogether — a testament to the good-bad film’s journey towards goodness. Jaume Collet-Serra is back, and his relationship with Netflix is a match made in B-movie heaven. God knows the streamer needed a nicer trashy-timepass section. Carry-On is more than that, so the bar is already raised — and full of drunken Christmas cheer.

Carry-On is currently streaming on Netflix.