Junior TSA agent Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) and his partner Nora Parisi (Sofia Carson) have a rather exciting Christmas Eve. It’s not just that working on Christmas sucks, and even more so doing so at LAX, as they both are. Nora has also just told Ethan that she is pregnant, and his reaction is rather more complicated than one would probably hope for from a new father, though, to be fair to the guy, his reaction is based on self-doubt instead of the old deadbeat dad routine.
After some dithering, Ethan does decide to take this as an opportunity to get himself out of the motivational slump he has been in ever since he didn’t make it into cop school. Alas, his new-found go-getting attitude does put him in the crosshairs of a mysterious Traveler (Jason Bateman), who really, really needs Ethan’s help to get an object on an airplane. If not, a bullet just might collide with Nora’s brain.
Ethan’s doing his best to outwit his tormentor without endangering lives, but that turns into a very difficult proposition.
After going through a bit of a Rock-shaped slump, Jaume Collet-Serra is back making the kind of genre movies he’s shown himself to be oh so very good at. As always with the director, the initial set-up and characterization of Carry-On (not to be confused with the Carry On films for my imaginary readers from the British Isles) are taken somewhere out of cliché central. Once the plot gets rolling, however, that sort of thing becomes utterly irrelevant to the enjoyment gleaned from the film’s tightly constructed series of escalations, where every single move Ethan manages to make only appears to make the situation more dramatic and acute. There’s the proper and pleasant breathlessness to proceedings Collet-Serra does so well, and a kinetic energy that belies the fact this is taking place in a comparatively small number of places.
But then, one of the touches that give the film its extra kick is how well it uses the very quotidian locations inside of an airport for maximum excitement. Who knew baggage conveyor systems could be so exciting?
Also exciting – at least to me – is how well Carry-On uses the cliché characters and relations it establishes to further its dramatic impact. While Ethan is certainly the film’s protagonist, Nora and certain other characters are actually doing things as well, which of course makes it easier for a viewer not to see them as some kind of narrative furniture.
So yes, it’s Jaume Collet-Serra making a very Jaume Collet-Serra movie again, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
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