For at least the first half of Carry-On, I often noticed my thoughts wandering away from the action onscreen. This is something I pay attention to more closely when watching to review – it’s always notable when a movie doesn’t hold your focus, even if it’s not always to blame. But I was more aware of it than usual this time because I wasn’t thinking about my day, or my next meal, or what I had to do tomorrow. My wandering thoughts never really left the movie. I was not thinking about Carry-On the story, but Carry-On the story vehicle.

Carry On is a film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, focusing on a young TSA agent who is coerced by a mysterious traveler into allowing a dangerous package onto a Christmas Eve flight. As events unfold, he must use his wits to resolve the perilous situation.Release Date December 13, 2024 Runtime 119 Minutes Cast Taron Egerton , Jason Bateman , Sofia Carson , Danielle Deadwyler , Tonatiuh , Theo Rossi , Logan Marshall-Green , Dean Norris , Sinqua Walls , Curtiss Cook , Joe Williamson , Gil Perez-Abraham , Josh Brener , Benito Martinez , Edwin Kho , Reisha Reynolds , Adam Stephenson , Michael Scott , Jeff Pope , Raymond Rehage Director Jaume Collet-Serra Expand

I had questions I wanted answered, but other than “What’s in the suitcase?”, they weren’t narrative ones. I wanted to know why this type of movie was being told in this way, with these actors. For the substantial period of time that Carry-On tries to take itself seriously, I experienced it mostly as a movie star test for Taron Egerton: Is he this kind of guy, or that kind? As a way to watch what eventually becomes some off-the-rails fun, I actually recommend it – even if you get more of what Egerton’s screen presence isn’t than what it is.

Carry-On (Mostly) Wastes A Perfectly Good Thriller Premise
The Plotting Is Solid, But The Movie Is Otherwise Empty

The setup for Carry-On, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by T.J. Fixman, is the kind of simple that will catch the eye of anyone who loves a good thriller. Egerton’s Ethan Kopek is a TSA officer in a rut, who, on Christmas Eve, gets the jolting news that he’s going to be a father. His loving partner Nora (Sofia Carson), who’s higher up the food chain at LAX, nudges him toward reapplying for the police academy, a dream he’s given up on. In that spirit, he makes today the day he commits to his current career.

Big mistake. Today is also the day that a criminal-for-hire (Jason Bateman) needs to smuggle something through airport security, and when Ethan’s striving gets him unexpectedly behind the scanner on the line he’d targeted, he becomes his new mark. Ethan finds himself in possession of an earpiece, and after some ominous texts, he puts it in. The Mysterious Traveler, as he’s credited, tells him how it is: let one bag through and Nora lives.

I found it fairly inert. Not because it’s poorly plotted, from a twists-and-turns perspective, but because I don’t believe
Carry-On
is actually interested in its characters…

We learn some things about the Traveler right away. In a prologue, we see him procure whatever’s in the suitcase from some Russian gangsters, then summarily eliminate them. We know he has a team of at least two – one at the family home of the guy Ethan replaced, all dressed up with no one to kidnap, and one, the Mysterious Watcher (Theo Rossi), acting as the “guy in the chair” from a van in the LAX parking lot. They have a plan, they have resources, and they’re capable of improvising with ruthless efficiency.

What happens next is meant to be a gripping game of cat-and-mouse, in which Ethan tries to disrupt this scheme and finds out what happens when the Traveler catches on. I found it fairly inert. Not because it’s poorly plotted, from a twists-and-turns perspective, but because I don’t believe Carry-On is actually interested in its characters beyond their basic story functions. I pulled no sense of who they really are, dramatically, from what happens to them, nor do I think it matters much to how things progress.

Worse, perhaps, is that Carry-On seems uninterested in the larger significance of its premise.I feel compelled to invoke Juror No. 2, a very different shade of 2024 thriller with a similarly simple hook that succeeds because it takes its central ethical quandary very seriously. The mystery of the bag’s contents gave Carry-On the perfect opportunity to do the same – a version of the trolley problem, with loved ones and friends on one track and only the potential for disaster on the other. What choice can Ethan live with? Would knowing change his answer?

Carry-On Is A Star-Driven Movie That Doesn’t Understand Its Star
At Least, Until Taron Egerton Is Unleashed About Halfway Through

The film doesn’t really care, and so must lean on its performers because emotional investment in them can make up for a lot of emptiness. As a result, I spent a lot of time wondering why Egerton wasn’t really working for me. Firstly, at this stage, I don’t think American is comfortably in his wheelhouse – there’s a Christmas-related joke early on winking at his real-life Britishness that only highlights the problem.

The dumber it gets, the more fun I had.

Secondly, with some clear parallels to Die Hard, Collet-Serra seems to be presenting Egerton as a Bruce Willis-type, which I can now definitively say he is not. He may be relatable, but not in an everyman way; he reads onscreen as extraordinary, even if his background isn’t. Carry-On also seems to try him as a Matt Damon-type, which is closer, but he doesn’t convey the same fortitude. You feel pretty consistently throughout that Ethan is outmatched here.

At a critical point in the second half, Ethan gets out of his chair for good, and Carry-On really picks up. Several moving pieces start to collide in increasingly absurd ways, especially once Danielle Deadwyler’s police detective, who is investigating the dead Russians, puts two and two together. The movie stops pretending to care about what’s going on at the character level and starts to play with just how far this premise can be pushed. The dumber it gets, the more fun I had.

But, maybe most crucially, this is also when Egerton plays a Tom Cruise-type – made amusingly obvious by Ethan, established as an ex-track athlete, sprinting everywhere he goes. Cruise’s action star persona often hinges on being on his back foot; his opponent has outmaneuvered him, and he must (literally) race to catch up. And, because he is exceptional, he does. He works in films like Mission: Impossible and Edge of Tomorrow because no matter how many times we see him fail, we believe there is no obstacle he can’t eventually overcome.

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Egerton’s got something in this vein. Cruise-esque exceptionalism, but cut with relatability like he came from the everyday world but clearly wasn’t meant to stay there. When Carry-On mines it, everything clicks, but because it does so inconsistently, I had a pretty mixed time. Outside of being even more certain I’d watch Deadwyler in anything, I at least came away knowing what I’d like to see from Egerton in the future. Hardly consolation for this not being it.

Carry-On is available to stream on Netflix on December 13. The film is 119 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for strong violence, bloody images, some language and suggestive references.

Your changes have been saved My List My Favorite MoviesMy Watchlist 5/10 Carry-On ProsEventually leans into the silliness and becomes a fun rideSolid thriller plottingDanielle Deadwyler’s in it ConsWastes the dramatic potential of its premiseMisuses Taron Egerton more often than it gets his screen presence rightInconsistently engaging