PLOT: An FBI agent (Dwayne Johnson) who’s been framed by a notorious art thief (Gal Gadot) must team with another thief to get even and clear his name.
REVIEW: Red Notice is apparently the priciest film in Netflix history, with a budget somewhere in the neighbourhood of 160-200 million dollars. It’s an attempt by them to create their own Fast & Furious-style franchise, complete with sexy thieves who operate outside the law, and a tough international cop, played by The Rock, trying to take them down before being forced to team up with them to clear his name. The character Dwayne Johnson plays here, John Hartley, is nearly identical to Luke Hobbs minus a few easy to predict twists and turns. You can’t blame Netflix. They want a franchise so pairing Dwayne Johnson with Ryan Reynolds, one of the most universally beloved actors out there, and Gal Gadot in a tried and true formula probably felt pretty safe.
And that, my friends, is part of the problem. Red Notice is so assembly line and predictable that from the second it starts, you’ll feel like you’ve already seen everything that’s happening. Even the action scenes feel cribbed from other movies. There’s an opening parkour sequence on some scaffolding which was already done (brilliantly) in Casino Royale and then Quantum of Solace. Then there’s an escape from a Russian jail with a helicopter, which was done just a few months ago in Black Widow. Then, there’s an endless car chase through an unground mineshaft that’s Fast & Furious meets Indiana Jones (complete with Ryan Reynolds humming the Indiana Jones theme) but not as exciting as either of them. It’s all been done.
This is a movie that coasts entirely on the charm of its stars. Netflix is banking on the fact that we’ll be so tickled to see Reynolds and the Rock in a buddy flick, with Gadot thrown in for good measure, that that will be enough. The action is massive here – as big as in any big screen tentpole movie, but it all rings hollow. Why? Because there’s no menace. Red Notice has a near-complete absence of villains. Fast & Furious never made that mistake. Our heroic thieves needed an antagonist, but here all they have is a cartoonish weapons dealer played by Chris Diamantopoulos, who’s no threat at all. There are endless shootouts, but it’s just our three heroes shooting it out with the cops trying to catch them – but no one ever actually gets shot or wounded. This plays by the A-Team rules, where no one ever gets hurt.
At least you can say that Red Notice is competently made, even if it never comes off as very exciting. Rawson Marshall Thurber, who wrote, produced and directed, already made a big action movie with The Rock, Skyscraper. At the same time, famed stuntman Daniel Bernhardt shows up in a cameo as a Russian thug, making me think he and the John Wick crew had a hand in the action. Yet, again, there are no super memorable fights. I was pretty psyched actually when Bernhardt showed up as I assumed he and The Rock would have a massive brawl, but it never happens.
That said, The Rock and Ryan Reynolds are nothing if not likable, even though neither stretches in the slightest. They seem to be on autopilot. So this is an easy win for them. Only Gal Gadot stretches in the slightest as she has to play a slick criminal instead of Wonder Woman. It’s like her Fast and Furious character Giselle got a spin-off, although she’s looser and having more fun here. Everything feels so manufactured, save for one or two decent throwaway jokes, such as when The Rock jumps in a car, and the horribly overused “Sabotage” by The Beastie Boys hits the soundtrack only to be immediately interrupted. I wish the film itself had been as clever.
While I didn’t like Red Notice, I think if you simply want light, fluffy entertainment, you might enjoy this. Some exciting locations, such as Cairo, Sardinia, Rome and more, are used, but this could have been a better film with some legit menace and a little more creativity. This is by the numbers, but you can’t say they didn’t go big on this one – with the ending teasing a sequel that could potentially be a lot better than the original. We’ll see.
5
