'Carry-On': Remove your shoes, pour some liquids for an exciting TSA thriller

The tightly spun and thoroughly entertaining Netflix holiday thriller “Carry-On" had a reported budget of about $47 million, which is about a quarter of what it cost to make the bloated and star-studded and instantly forgettable likes of the Netflix mega-movies “Red Notice” and “The Gray Man,” and maybe there’s a lesson here and maybe not.

I'll take four movies like “Carry-On” over another “Red Notice” any day. Give me a taut, crisply written, well-acted, character-driven suspense story over yet another impressively mounted but empty-calorie international thriller with superstars mugging and quipping their way through a low-stakes story filled with CGI and swooshing drone shots.

Not that I’m saying “Carry-On” will dazzle you with its creativity. It’s more like a blend of similar movies in the genre:

• With the action taking place on Christmas Eve and the airport as the primary setting for a game of cat and mouse between a guy with a badge but limited authority who winds up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a terrorist threatening to kill hundreds if his demands aren’t met, it’s reminiscent of “Die Hard 2” from 1990.
• The story is laced with tense and ongoing conversations between the earpiece-wearing TSA Officer Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) and a twisted mastermind (played by Jason Bateman) on the other end of the line who plays mind games with Ethan, ridicules him for lacking the courage to try to make something of himself, and threatens to kill Ethan or someone close to him if he doesn’t follow orders. Much like the framework of the 2002 psychological thriller “Phone Booth.”
• Certain elements (that we won’t reveal) of “Carry-On” reminded me of the 2005 Cillian Murphy-Rachel McAdams film “Red Eye.”

The opening sequence of “Carry-On” even has a bit of a “Lethal Weapon” vibe, with the same Los Angeles setting but Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” on the soundtrack instead of Bobby Helms' “Jingle Bell Rock.” As was the case with “Lethal Weapon,” there’s a mysterious and violent episode, and then we cut to a scene of domestic bliss and celebration as morning breaks. Ethan and his girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson), the director of airport operations for the fictional Northwind Airlines at Los Angeles International Airport, have just learned they’re having a baby. The happy couple even gets to ride together to work, as they’ll both be on duty on this Christmas Eve.

Inspired by Nora to take some initiative and not just coast on the job, Ethan lobbies his supervisor, Senior TSO Phil Sarkowski (a perfectly cast Dean Norris), for a promotion, and Sarkowski reluctantly agrees to give Ethan a stint “on the machine,” i.e., monitoring the X-ray scanner for all carry-on items on the conveyer belt. Ethan has just settled in for the long day when a passenger hands him an earpiece she found in a bin. Seconds later, Ethan receives text messages from a restricted number instructing him to put the device in his right ear — and that puts him in contact with the Traveler (Jason Bateman), who says, “Ethan, today is a day you’re going to remember for a very long time, but if you handle it right, you’re gonna have a chance to forget it. One bag, for one life. That’s the deal, that’s what’s going to happen.”

Traveler assigns Ethan a simple task: An associate of his will be going through Ethan’s station in a few moments, carrying a suitcase containing something that will be flagged by the scanner. All Ethan has to do is ... nothing. If he allows the passenger through, no one will get hurt. If he doesn’t, if he tries to contact anyone on his phone or signal to a colleague in any manner, people will die.

That’s your movie right there. At first, we wonder why Traveler wouldn’t just transport this bag in a vehicle, but the screenplay by T.J. Fixman eventually addresses that issue in plausible fashion. As Ethan and the Traveler engage in psychological and even physical warfare, we follow the parallel machinations of Theo Rossi’s Watcher, a tech expert and sniper who at one point trains a laser square onto Nora’s forehead, and Danielle Deadwyler’s L.A. Police Detective Elena Cole, who has the familiar role of the That One Cop Who Believes the Threat is Real.

As you might expect, some of the plot developments stretch credulity as the body count begins to pile up. Still, director Jaume Collet-Serra (“Black Adam,” “Jungle Cruise”) does a fine job of handling the balance between exposition and action sequences, while the behind-the-scenes machinations of the TSA come across as authentic, and Taron Egerton makes for a likable regular guy who can also run through airports and pull off some ingenious moves against that dastardly Traveler guy. “Carry-On” is a sharp, smallish thriller with some big and satisfying payoffs.