It’s the holiday season and Los Angeles airport is chock-a-block with passengers. It’s a ltime and place ripe for a thriller, which Carry-On is, despite the boring-sounding title.
Ethan (Taron Egerton) has taken up a job in the security department because he could not get into the police force, but he is bored and dispirited, so lax at his job that he has never got a promotion. His pregnant girlfriend Nora (Sophia Carson), who also works in management at the same airport, nudges him to work harder.
After pleading with his boss, he gets to man the baggage scanner, and his day goes to pieces. He is asked to place an earpiece in his ear, through which an unnamed traveller (Jason Bateman) gives him orders in a smooth but menacing voice. He is to allow a particular passenger to pass through, or Nora will be killed. The traveller and his cohorts have eyes on Ethan, and all his attempts to call for help are quickly thwarted. But he did manage to make a quick 911 call, which eventually triggers off alarm bells in the right places, because an alert LAPD officer Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) starts joining dots.
The bag contains the deadly nerve gas, Novichok, that the Russians use to kill their enemies, because it is fast-acting and has no antidote. The bag contains a Novichok bomb that is intended to assassinate a target, but will also kill all 250 passengers on board that flight. It hardly matters who or what purpose, because it is just a peg on which to hang the thriller so zippily paced, that is really blink-and-miss.
Ethan thinks on his feet to try to find a way to halt the traveller’s plans, but the man is equally sharp. Ethan learns that the man carrying the bag with the bomb has also been coerced into doing so by a threat to his partner. To keep Ethan compliant, a couple of innocents are killed, forcing him to allow the bag. But there is time between a bag passing a scanner and actually going on the plane, and Ethan has just that much time to save Nora and disarm the bomb.
The film is set mostly in and around the airport, full of complaining passengers, which builds a kind of claustrophobic atmosphere for an adrenaline-charged Ethan to figure out how to get out of the maze he has been forced into. The traveller even has a pleasant (for him) conversation with Ethan, not caring that he has been seen, because, of course, the fall guy is not meant to live after the job is done.
Carry-On is a straightforward actioner, without all that heavy VFX and wirework. It depends mainly on the smart script (TJ Fixman) and the performances by the clean-cut Taron Egerton and the predatory Jason Bateman. Backed with a playlist of famous Christmas songs, the film is refreshingly no-nonsense; it promises entertainment and delivers.
Carry-On
Directed by: Jaume Collet-Sara
Cast: Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Sophia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler and others
On Netflix
