People are already calling Carry-On "Die Hard in an airport", seemingly forgetting that's what Die Hard 2 already was. But like Die Hard, Carry On is a lot of fun, is set at Christmas and has a great premise.
TSA security agent Ethan (Taron Egerton) is in a rut with his LAX airport based job that he’s hardly progressed in. With his girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson) expecting, the pressure is on to sort his career out. In an attempt to impress, Ethan pushes to take the monitoring position at the carry on security scanner for the first time ever on a very busy Christmas Eve.
That’s where he finds himself in possession of an earpiece through which a mysterious man (Jason Bateman) tells Ethan that he is to let a specific passenger’s luggage through security, no matter what dangerous material the x-ray reveals is inside. If he doesn’t comply, Nora will be killed.
It's a fantastic set up that largely pays off. Taron Egerton is a likeable lead who finds himself trying to not raise suspicion for Nora’s sake while also desperately coming up with a way to let people know without his manipulators becoming wise.
His dialogue bounces beautifully off of Jason Bateman’s no-nonsense contractor who just wants to get a job done. Jason Bateman should play more villains, he’s really good at it. The tone is very much early Michael Bay meets early Shane Black, slick and entertaining.
Other films Carry On may be likened to are 2005s Red Eye, a similar dynamic and premise, bad man wants regular person to allow something possibly catastrophic to happen or 2002’s Phone Booth.
Phone Booth never leaves the area in and around the booth and Red Eye is largely set on an airplane. Unfortunately Carry On feels the need to show us special agent Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) as she desperately pieces together what the devious plot actually is.
Elena’s storyline is entertaining in parts and has some great action that the producers probably really wanted to inject, but one wonders how much more compelling it could have been if we never left the airport. It’s a strong enough setup with two great leads to be a fantastic chamber-piece of sorts.
Despite our "what ifs?", Carry-On is a very welcome surprise addition to our Christmas viewing thanks to stylish direction from Jaume Collet-Serra, known for the very fun horror Orphan and FOUR Liam Neeson action films (!) of varying quality such as The Commuter, another entertaining film with a terrible title.
Commiserations to those expecting a reboot of the British comedy franchise.
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