Carry-On ** (2024, Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler, Jason Bateman) – Classic Movie Review 13,331

The 2024 American action thriller film Carry-On stars Taron Egerton as an airport security officer who tries to outsmart a mysterious traveller (Jason Bateman) forcing him to allow an incredibly dangerous nerve agent onto a Christmas Eve flight.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra’s 2024 American action thriller film Carry-On stars Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler and Jason Bateman. Written by T J Fixman, it features a young Transportation Security Administration officer who is blackmailed by a threat to the life of his pregnant girlfriend into allowing a nerve agent on board a Christmas Eve flight.

Taron Egerton stars as Ethan Kopek, the TSA airport security officer at Los Angeles International Airport, who literally races to outsmart a mysterious traveller (Jason Bateman) forcing him to allow the incredibly dangerous item onto the flight.

Carry-On is tolerable as brain-in-neutral hokum, but this is a cheesy, increasingly unconvincing, illogical and overblown action thriller, with several weak and uninteresting performances, finally stoved in by ludicrous CGI action scenes and an anti-climactic, then sentimental ending. It would like to be Die Hard, but it hasn’t got the stuff. T J Fixman isn’t the man to fix the holes in the plot, and Jaume Collet-Serra’s handling is brash and over-confident. Also it does ramble on far too long at 119 minutes and outsays its welcome. It could lose half an hour profitably.

Most of the casting feels wilfully odd but some of it pays off. Taron Egerton, looking understandably wrecked, brings the film whatever credibility and appeal it has. He makes a very likeable everyman hero. He can even get a spot of acting in between the action. Jason Bateman is okay as the villain, but, really, what can he do? Well, anyway, he does what he can with the smooth psycho stereotype. Dean Norris is well cast and good as Ethan’s supervisor Phil Sarkowski.

Carry-On was released on Netflix on December 13, 2024.

Cast: Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler, Jason Bateman, Adam Stephenson, Joel Griffin, Reisha Reynolds, Damon Lipari, Curtiss Cook

Duration: 119 minutes.

Production: Dylan Clark Productions, DreamWorks Pictures, Amblin Entertainment.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,331

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