Like a bloodied soldier plucked up from a battlefield just in time, director Jaume Collet-Serra has returned from the world of blockbuster filmmaking. After directing some Warner Bros. horror films in the 2000s, Collet-Serra made a name for himself in the 2010s helming tightly contained thrillers like The Shallows, Non-Stop, and The Commuter. His works were often quite fun Saturday Afternoon movies and I'm especially fond of his underrated 2015 feature Run All Night (which features maybe the best feature film use of actor Joel Kinnaman). Naturally, Hollywood saw those strengths and said "This guy should direct generic $200+ million blockbusters starring Dwayne Johnson!"
Thus, Jaume Collet-Serra's most recent filmmaking exploits have been Jungle Cruise and Black Adam. These titles traded in compact suspense for excessive CGI and inert dramatic stakes. After helping to forever change the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe, Collet-Serra is back in the more intimate thriller game directing T.J. Fixman's Carry-On screenplay. Unfortunately, so much time spent away from this world diluted some of the Run All Night helmer’s skills.
Carry-On begins on Christmas Eve, as TSA agent Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) and his newly-expecting wife Nora Parisi (Sofia Carson) arrive at LAX for their respective jobs. Fixman's script already struggles in these early scenes trying to establish a lovey-dovey relationship between the two while they solely speak in expository phrases like "that was the last time you were excited about the future". There's also some weird incongruity with Kopek as a character. We're immediately thrust into his world and first see him acting amiable with all his LAX co-workers. He even knows everyone's names!
However, quickly supporting players like his boss Phil Sarkowski (Dean Norris) keeps saying he's coasting through his job and has no ambitions. Kopek's exuding a jovial air, not a slacker aura! Even arriving a few minutes late for a meeting is typical cocky but lovable movie protagonist behavior. That's someone whose life is a flat line!
Thankfully, Carry-On quickly charges into juicier material when Kopek finds an earbud that he’s informed (via text) to put into his ear. A mysterious voice belonging to The Traveler (Jason Bateman) then informs Kopek that he's got a big job to do. An associate of The Traveler will come through the TSA line today. No matter what's in the man's carry-on luggage, Kopek needs to let him through. Suddenly, Kopek's stuck in a cat-and-mouse game with a guy he can't even see. While trying to put on a calm exterior, he's trying to figure out how to get out of this situation, especially as it gets clearer The Traveler's grand plans involve countless innocent lives perishing.
Even if his New Jersey/Los Angeles accent is a little shaky, Edgerton is an inspired piece of casting for Kopek. Egerton just has a more believable everyman air to him that served him well in previous projects like the first Kingsman movie, Eddie the Eagle, or Rocketman. With, say, uber-muscular and tall James McAvoy in Speak No Evil, you're just waiting for the guy to get intimidating. Edgerton, meanwhile, more authentically reads as an underdog who can’t just flex his way out of a given situation. That’s just the kind of ordinary soul you want headlining a thriller like this.
Translating Bateman's trademark smarmy voice to Carry-On equivalents to The Caller from Phone Booth is further smart casting. Even beyond the fun meta quality of Carry-On functioning as a movie where Michael Bluth torments an action movie star, the assuredness and world-weariness Bateman brought to everything from Zootopia to Air enhances the scariness of The Traveler. This guy always sounds like this is just another 9-to-5 exercise to him. Contrasting that smoothness with Egerton’s constantly frightened Kopek proves consistently engaging. Just watching the two of them trade barbs and navigating tense scenarios is enough for a great thriller.
Alas, Carry-On is one of those thrillers that can't commit to keeping its action as confined as it should be. As all-time great thrillers like Rope show, the fewer backdrops your story employs, the better. Trap, for instance, got enjoyable mileage keeping the camera locked in one room at a time. Alas, Fixman's Carry-On screenplay keeps cutting away from Kopek to various subplots. This includes one especially egregious narrative thread focusing on police officer Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler). First off, it’s surreal seeing a performer of Deadwyler’s caliber in a forgettable supporting role in this kind of movie. It's like Daniel Day-Lewis was sixth-billed in Unlawful Entry after winning his first Oscar for My Left Foot!
Deadwyler does what she can in the role. However, constantly cutting back to cops following a breadcrumb trail that eventually leads to The Traveler isn’t very compelling. For one thing, it’s one of those plotlines where the audience is way ahead of the on-screen characters. Waiting for Cole and company to realize facts the viewer was aware of in Carry-On’s prologue isn’t pulse-pounding. Plus, Cole’s sequences are full of generic banter with co-workers like Herschel (Josh Brener) about strawberry-flavored ho-hos. These stale quips and lines will have you yearning to return to the TSA line with Kopek.
These sequences involving officers trudging around a generic office space or brightly lit crime scenes also hammer home Carry-On's dismal visual impulses. As late as 2018's The Commuter, Jaume Collet-Serra still shot his projects on 35mm film (Non-Stop and Run All Night were also captured in this format). Alas, the filmmaker is now in Netflix Original Movie territory. This is where most features shoot digitally in a very specific house style. Thus, he and Lyle Vincent shoot Carry-On in an uber-clean fashion that drains visual personality from the production. An early scene of Cole and a colleague walking around a crime scene could’ve been clipped from Jupiter’s Legacy or countless other Netflix shows!
These gripes aren’t just related to streaming or corporate-related woes, though. This style of shooting just isn’t conducive to a thriller. There’s no edge or lived-in reality to Carry-On’s images. LAX's Christmas Eve chaos fails to register when every shot looks polished and ready for a Tide ad. Composer Lorne Balfe (reuniting with Collet-Serra after their work on Black Adam) delivers a Carry-On score that’s equally generic. Neither the airport nor Yuletide backdrops inspire much unique or tense instrumentation in his compositions. Such derivative qualities render Carry-On way less absorbing than it should be.
Thankfully, Fixman’s script regains some of its momentum for the third act. Unsurprisingly, this is where the scope tightens mightily, which allows Collet-Serra to really engage in his best suspense thriller impulses. As Carry-On prepared for its inevitable landing, I had to hand the movie one thing: I was genuinely frustrated for Kopek. Every time he reluctantly lied to Nora or took the fall for some machinations of The Traveler, exasperation brewed in my stomach. This movie must have done something right in getting me reasonably connected to this poor guy’s plight. On the other hand, his goal of becoming a cop was impossible to root for. Sorry Kopek, ACAB applies to you too.
Carry-On is a frustratingly bumpy ride. Turbulence here manifests in a script that (like the ending of The Commuter, come to think of it) can't resist blowing up its scope to an adverse degree. Even a fitfully amusing skirmish scene set to "Last Christmas" and the always-welcome presence of Deadwyler can't conceal that Carry-On would’ve benefited from a more confidently streamlined storytelling approach. Meanwhile, the film’s visuals and score lack the tactility and ingenuity, respectively, defining the best thrillers. Thankfully, even after spending time in the land of sterile Dwayne Johnson blockbusters, Jaume Collet-Serra can still muster up some fun thrillers, especially when he’s working with actors like Egerton and Bateman. Even so, Carry-On too often frustratingly provides a half-hearted echo of the director’s much better earlier works.