Aiming for a Die Hard-esque niche, Carry-On is a bit of brainless fun on Netflix
“Airports turn people into such dickheads”
In the same way that the name Kylie has such different significance in the UK and the US (Minogue vs Jenner, natch), the title Carry-On is loaded completely differently on either side of the Atlantic, particularly when it comes to film. Inevitably though, since this is an American film released on Netflix, this isn’t a new addition to the British comedy franchise but rather a reference to luggage.
Written by TJ Fixman and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, it’s an airport-set thriller which takes place on Christmas Eve, giving it a weird patina of being a Christmas-ish film despite being about blackmail, Novichok and terrorist conspiracies. And it is pretty good altogether, tautly plotted and executed in a way that smoothly efficient, perhaps without ever quite making us call for matron though….
Taron Egerton plays Ethan Kopek, a TSA officer at LAX with a newly pregnant girlfriend and distant dreams of being a police officer. When he strongarms his way into manning the X-ray machine as a test for getting a promotion, he finds himself embroiled in a dangerous plot to wave through a suspicious package, threatening messages coming from the manipulative Traveler via a rogue earbud.
Making the most of its largely contained setting and managing to maintain a decent level of ominous threat through an imaginative cat and mouse battle as Ethan tries to wriggle out of the Traveler’s traps but coming to realise how murderously serious he is. Jason Bateman is effectively cast against type as The Traveler and Egerton hits the mark as the everyman protagonist, albeit with impressive running skills.
