Carry-On is a perfectly serviceable example of glossy junk. Its heroes aren’t that bright, and its villains are too clever for their own good, and all the while, the plot machinations keep churning in the bad guys’ favor until they don’t. Everyone does their job so perfectly that even an old Scrooge like myself couldn’t help but have a good time.
Carry-On is smack in the heart of where Jaume Collet-Serra lives. He’s a director who’s made a career of making glossy exploitation-esque films. Somehow, along the way, he stumbled into blockbusters like Jungle Cruise and Black Adam and never seemed to find a way to work within the mega-budget studio system. He churned out movies that were never as interesting or as fun as his lower-budget offerings like The Shallows.
Collet-Serra’s movies are the cinematic equivalent of an airport novel, novels you read at the airport or on a plane. He is the Lee Child of this genre in that he makes it look so easy and does it with such unbridled shamelessness that it’s easy to take it for granted. Carry-On isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s the kind of solid three-star movie you used to be able to catch on Channel 62 back in the day, with a little bigger budget and more technical proficiency.
Collet-Serra and screenwriter T.J. Fixman, a name that sounds like something from one of Child’s Jack Reacher novels, take great care and joy in setting up the checkerboard. From setting up the relationship between Taron Egerton’s Ethan Kopek and his fiance Nora, played by Sofia Carson, to the camaraderie of his fellow TSA agents. Carry-On doesn’t dawdle; instead, it prefers to get right to the meat of the thriller, as it were.
The joy of Carry-On is how laughably implausible most of the script’s narrative conveniences are and how little Collet-Serra and Fixman seem to care. A reminder that it’s not what a film is but how a film is, to paraphrase Ebert. Collet-Serra makes sure that Carry-On moves at a much quicker pace than the TSA checkpoints.
Lyle Vincent, the cameraman, highlights the blues of the TSA uniforms in a clever little touch to add a sense of calm to a movie that will ultimately turn to taut tension. The trio of editors Fred Raskin, Elliot Greenberg, and Krisztian Majdik keeps the cuts frenetic but never frantic. Better yet, Collet-Serra and Vincent work with the trio to ensure that Carry-On is one of the few modern movies, streaming or theatrical, properly lit to where you can see what is going on, to say nothing of how the colors pop. It’s a strange time when the fantasy blockbuster looks more drab and realistic than the grounded Netflix thriller riffing off Die Hard.
In all seriousness, it’s more of a riff on Die Hard 2 than Die Hard in that the terrorists are actually terrorists. Of course, much will be written about Jason Bateman’s nameless terrorist. Known as the Traveler, Bateman’s presence works the nerves with calculated precision. He uses his deadpan demeanor to display his character’s callousness and cruelty, a nifty feat considering how much of his work in Carry-On is his disembodied voice, calmly dishing out commands to Egerton’s Ethan through an earpiece.
Bateman and Egerton’s back and forth is a reminder that chemistry between co-stars is becoming as rare as chemistry between on-screen lovers. You can feel Egerton sweat as he tries to get one step ahead of Bateman’s nefarious schemes. Part of the charm of Egerton’s Ethan is, in contrast to how clever we’re meant to think he is, he’s kind of slow on the uptake. It takes him until almost halfway through the second reel to grasp that Bateman’s terrorist has no moral scruples. But I found those moments refreshing. It’s nice to see an average guy get into the mix in an era of hyper-competent heroes. By making him average, the filmmakers make his minor successes feel all the more triumphant.
While never breathless, the pacing of Carry-On is methodical and brisk enough to where you don’t ponder how easy it is for a van to find a parking space directly across from the airport entrance so a hitman played by Theo Rossi could snipe Ethan’s fiance Nora.
Another reason Carry-On works so well is that Collet-Serra stacks the cast with that tragically dying breed known as character actors. Actors like Rossi, Dean Norris, Logan Marshall-Green, Curtis Cook, Sinqua Walls, and Gil Perez-Abraham all show up and instantly clue you to who they are as characters. Danielle Deadwyler even turns up as a no-nonsense cop, always one step behind Ethan, the Traveler, and the audience.
Carry-On moves with an almost clock-like workmanship. It’s not precise, but it’s well-oiled enough that I couldn’t help but be impressed. The only hiccup is a car crash scene that, while fun, feels too weightless. Still, Carry-On has one of my favorite eye-rolling, deadpan one-liner exchanges of the year. An exchange that comes shortly after one of the more satisfying character deaths. That alone more than makes up for the few times it stumbles.
Collet-Serra may not be as stylish or visually verbose as, say, Tony Scott. But he has a confidence in his craft that allows us to trust him and delight in the story he tells. Despite what the big studios would have us believe, film is a visual medium, and presentation matters.
Images courtesy of Netflix
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