"Carry-On" 4K Review

While Netflix's prestige Oscar-bait film Maria dropped last Wednesday, Friday is reserved for their passable popcorn fluff titles and this week's entry is the high-concept thriller Carry-On. Does it make its flight or end up in lost luggage? Let's find out.

Taron Egerton (Kingsman series) stars as Ethan, a TSA agent at LAX whose girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson, the Disney Descendants series), is newly pregnant. Their relationship is under some strain because he's kind of a listless vessel, underachieving in work and life. He shows up late for work on Christmas Eve and still asks his boss, Sarkowski (Dean Norris, Breaking Bad), for a promotion and is nearly laughed out of the room due to his lack of initiative.

However, a co-worker, Jason (Sinqua Walls, Friday Night Lights), suggests he take his place on the X-ray machine so he can work crowd management and Sarkowski reluctantly agrees. Jason feels bad for Ethan because he's only been there a few months and already gotten promoted twice while Ethan has been there three years and gone nowhere career-wise.

Unfortunately for Ethan, this means that when a bin comes through his machine with an earpiece in it and a note to stick it in his ear, he is now trapped in a scheme where the man on the other end, the nameless Traveler (Jason Bateman!), calmly informs him that unless he lets a specific bag pass through his scanner, someone will die, specifically Nora. With an accomplice, the Watcher (Theo Rossi, the kinky shrink in The Penguin), monitoring the security cameras, and a third, never seen, accomplice breaking into houses to gather intel - and initially intended to grab Jason's wife and kids as he was supposed to be on the machine - the Traveler is always ahead of Ethan frantic attempts to save Nora and the airport from the deadly carry-on.

Simultaneously, a LAPD detective, Cole (Danielle Deadwyler), investigating the murders of two Russians whacked by the Traveler earlier, is closing in on the airport as a possible destination for a suspected nerve gas weapon. When Ethan's failed attempt to call 911 is correlated to her case, she's on the move.

Carry-On is a decent, albeit predictable, potboiler that mostly succeeds due to Jaume Collet-Serra (Black Adam, The Shallows, four 2nd-tier Liam Neeson movies) taut direction because the screenplay by videogame writer T.J. Fixman, with additional uncredited input by Michael Green (Blade Runner 2049, Logan), is trope-heavy to the point you can spot which tertiary characters are going to be killed off the moment they're introduced. We also have to suspend disbelief that the Watcher has magical hacking powers to access information instantly and that he is able to find a convenient sniper vantage point in a parking structure where he can see Nora in the terminal. (To paraphrase Cinema Sins, convenient vantage point is convenient.)

Egerton is appropriately frantic as the man who finally finds something worth putting in the effort for and Bateman is surprisingly chilling as the low-key mastermind orchestrating this far-fetched scheme.

As far as passable yet forgettable Netflix Original movies go, Carry-On delivers what it says on the tin. You're paying for Netflix, so may as well watch it. It's not a waste of time.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.