AFTER receiving the good news on Christmas Eve that his girlfriend Nora Parisi (Sofia Carson) is pregnant, Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) begins to feel the pressure of becoming a father while holding a stagnating position as a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
Interpreting Nora’s encouragement for him to retry entering the police academy the wrong way, Ethan convinces his supervisor to transfer him upwards from the metal detector scanning lane to the baggage-scanning lane, which is the premise of Carry-On.
This throws a wrench into an unnamed traveller’s (Jason Bateman) plans, as he and his cohorts are forced to change their plan to get Ethan to allow a dangerous carry-on baggage to pass inspection and onto a plane.
The best description for the film is that it is very much a Die Hard film, at least in spirit, so much so that it is even better than Die Hard 2, which also involved a regular guy going against a group of terrorists in an airport on Christmas Eve.
However, what Carry-On does better is that it leans heavily towards the thriller elements rather than be an all-out action spectacle. Instead of propping up Egerton’s Ethan as an action hero, Carry-On leverages on the cat-and-mouse dynamic that is commonplace in similar thrillers.
It pits Ethan’s intelligence against Bateman’s “Traveller” as one attempts to outsmart and foil the other’s plans, while the other attempts to do the same but to accomplish their nefarious goal.
Both actors also find room to flex their acting chops, which goes against type. Bateman’s early career involved comedy, while Egerton made his film debut in the action-fuelled Kingsman: The Secret Service a decade ago.
Carry-On is also director Jaume Collet-Serra falling back on the styling of his older films involving suspense. After directing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s atrocious ego vehicle Black Adam two years ago, Carry-On is a return to form.
Those who enjoyed Collet-Serra’s Orphan and the five identical Liam Neeson action-thrillers he pumped out through the 2010s will enjoy what he offers in Carry-On, which is a far superior, smarter and more taut entry in his body of work. This is most certainly falling into the same “Christmas Movies List” as the first Die Hard and its sequel. It is just as enjoyable, if not more so.
Carry-On is streaming on Netflix.
