Keep Calm, Taron Egerton’s Carry-On Can’t Hurt You

Taron Egerton would no doubt very much appreciate it if you would take the bait and compare his new, holiday-adjacent Netflix action thriller Carry-On to Die Hard … or perhaps Die Hard 2, actually. And indeed, this is absolutely a vintage thriller in its DNA, perhaps more of a ‘90s homage than an ‘80s one; the kind of flick where a workaday white male schmuck has to rise to the occasion to thwart some seemingly omniscient bad guys while rediscovering the true meaning of … I don’t know, family? Christmas? Unpaid overtime? The point is, our protagonist learns a lesson, shoots some guys and emerges with his life and priorities newly sorted out. The only problem, of course, is that this vanishing breed of modestly budgeted thriller typically revolves almost entirely around the magnetic draw of a star whose easy confidence and charisma can make you fond of the character, even against your own will. And for whatever reason, Egerton is not that star for Carry-On, a film whose protagonist remains an awkward, unreadable cipher from start to finish, dragging down the stronger supporting work surrounding him. His “Ethan Kopek” feels like he should be a minor character in someone else’s film, rather than the star of his own.

The result is a hamstrung thriller that feels cheaper than it should, like a feature-length episode of FOX’s 9-1-1, bogged down by a sense of malaise radiating outward from its protagonist in waves. This is presumably not what director Jaume Collet-Serra was going for when he signed on for what was likely pitched as a relatively “easy” production, considering that this is coming off helming two massive, $200 million bloated studio monstrosities in the form of Disney’s Jungle Cruise and Warner’s Black Adam. Carry-On seems like it was probably positioned as a “back to basics” assignment for the guy, something to replicate the energy of his string of interchangeable 2010s actioners starring an over-the-hill Liam Neeson: Unknown, Non-Stop, Run all Night and The Commuter, many of them also involving mass transit. But where Neeson is never anything but a pleasure to watch as a star, even if perhaps you can’t fully believe whatever stuntwork his double is involved in, Egerton’s enterprising TSA agent faces an uphill battle in making any impression at all.

That’s right: Our hero is a TSA screener at a major L.A. airport, effectively giving him more in common with Lil Rel Howery’s Get Out character than he does with John McClane–again, largely minus the charisma. Ethan Kopek is a mid-30s slacker, disinterestedly coasting in his pat-down, metal detector job for several years after bombing out of his dream of completing the police academy. Just this morning, though, he’s had a fire lit under him: The opening moments linger on a positive pregnancy test taken by girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson), who also works some kind of customer management job at the airport, the script by T.J. Fixman seemingly lacking confidence that their conversation about her being pregnant will adequately convey the new stakes in Ethan’s life. Regardless, he now wants to make something of himself, anxious about being able to provide for a child and feeling inadequate about not having accomplished enough in his life. Jockeying for a chance at promotion, he requests a chance to work the baggage scanning device at airport security, putting him on a collision course with a deadly–but decidedly overwrought–plot with some well-heeled criminals who need to get one particular package through security.

The voice and face of that antagonistic criminal enterprise is an unnamed character, credited only as the “Mysterious Traveler,” and played with smarmy delight by a decidedly rude Jason Bateman. He’s the one person in the film who truly gets the assignment, and that’s absolutely to Carry-On’s benefit–Bateman is a total pro here, projecting just the right level of Hans Gruber-esque ultra-competence and arrogance as he speaks condescendingly to Ethan via an earbud microphone that is clandestinely put into his possession. Can you buy Bateman winning a fistfight against Egerton, given the 20 year age difference between them? Perhaps not, but it is believable for him to run circles around the younger man in a game of wits, blackmailing him into letting a particular suitcase get through security by threatening the life of Ethan’s newly pregnant girlfriend. If it sounds to you like that probably reduces the character of Nora to a plot contrivance and person-to-be-endangered, then you would be correct, but at least Bateman is having fun playing such a callous, professional character, one who still finds time to revel in demonstrating how much control he possesses over Ethan. The Traveler’s constant stream of quips help keep the film moving, although they highlight the fact that literally every one of the film’s effective jokes comes from someone other than Egerton.