Carry-On

How good is this new Netflix Christmas movie?

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Preface I do recommend seeing this movie (see my overall thoughts at the bottom). Despite recommending this movie, my review is mostly focused on ways that I would have improved the movie, so my thoughts in the Good, the Meh, and the Bad sections are going to have spoilers. If you don’t want to have anything spoiled, I’d highly recommend skipping those sections.

The Good: I think the best compliment I can give this movie is that it is the movie that Red One really wanted to be. Red One tried to be both a full on Christmas movie and action movie, and it didn’t do a good job at being either one of those. This movie takes place at Christmas time, allowing for (1) the Christmas spirit to be felt and (2) to have the stress and stakes of working in an airport at Christmas feel very apparent. Because of this, the movie can focus on doing what it wants to - being a good action-thriller.

In order for a thriller to be good, most of the time you need a great villain who propels everything forward. This movie has Jason Bateman playing the Traveler (he never says his name in the movie). He is smart, he is deceitful, he is cunning, and he is willing to play dirty, and Jason Bateman played the part impeccably.

On top of Bateman’s performance, I loved the way that his character went around manipulating characters into doing what he wanted. The Traveler would find people’s weak points and then threaten that weak point or kidnap the weak point in order to have that person do what he wanted. Additionally, each person that was being manipulated was being told specific directions of what to do nearly simultaneously, allowing for people to be manipulated at the same time against each other. I loved this tactic, and I only wish that there was more to this.

The Meh: While I loved the deception that the Traveler used, I just wish his team had 1 more person on it. His team included him, his trigger-man/guy watching the cameras, and the girl at the end who swapped plane tickets with him. The trigger-man should have been a separate character from the guy watching the cameras. Not only could this have made sure that every character that was being manipulated by the traveler could be spied on at all times, it also could have allowed the threats made to Taron Egerton’s character Ethan to actually feel threatening. The whole movie has the Traveler keep telling Ethan that his girlfriend is going to be killed and how he has a sniper on her at all times. It was technically a bluff because the guy watching the cameras would have to move in order to put the sniper on her. I wish there was a separate character that would have been the sniper on her at all times. That way, whenever Ethan’s girlfriend was being threatened we could have seen someone with a gun pointed at her at all times. That would have made all the threats actually have substance, and you could have seen and felt the presence in the movie (not just with words). This also could have allowed another takedown of a bad guy, which I always enjoy.

While this is not a critique of the movie, it’s more of a gripe. Taron Egerton has done great action/spy movies in the past (I’m thinking of the Kingsman movies) where he has done some awesome fight choreography. I wish they could have made his character a little better at fighting so we could have seen Egerton’s full fighting choreography skills on display. I don’t know how they could fit that in the movie, but I was just a little disappointed at times because it seemed that Egerton wasn’t being used to the extent of his abilities.

The Bad: The motivation for the Traveler and his associates is a little underwhelming. The Traveler is just the guy making sure the job gets done (that’s almost verbatim what he says not long into the movie). Yes, he’s very threatening and very good at what he does, but it was difficult to get fully invested in his threat because I didn’t fully understand his motivations. It seemed like he had no stake in the game besides just his own reputation.

Overall: I think this is a fun new take on an action-thriller in an airport. Bateman and Egerton had terrific performances, and I definitely think Bateman needs to have more villain/bad-guy roles in the future. As for new “Christmas movies” that came out this year, this is definitely the best one I have seen.

Rating: 4/5