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By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
This Holiday season, streamers have been powering the most unlikely films to the top of the charts, with a Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans film Red Onefrom the new is being beaten at the box office, holding the number on Amazon since its release, and Jack Black’s Satanic Christmas, Dear Santa Clauson its way to being one of Paramount+’s biggest hits ever. Their match is carry on, which debuted on Netflix on December 13, and every day since then, the airport thriller has been the most popular movie on the world’s most popular streaming service.
Simple And Predictable But Lots Of Fun
Carry-On it has a simplistic plot, but that’s part of the charm. Taron Egerton has been Robin Hood and Elton John, but here, he’s Ethan, a TSA officer at LAX, targeted by Traveler, a delightfully evil man Jason Bateman. A passenger uses blackmail and threats of violence against Ethan’s girlfriend to force the officer to drop one particular bag. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that the bag goes through, and yes, it’s a deadly weapon, but there’s still half the movie left to go.
Ethan is forced to make a series of moral decisions as he learns how far he will go to protect his friends and family. Complicating the situation is a network of Traveler agents, which includes the equally on-the-nose named Watcher, played by Sons of Anarchy Theo Rossi, who, just like Uatu from the Amazed comics, he can’t help but intervene. Dean Norris, who plays a TSA agent, also appears, and then the bodies start dropping like Carry-On ends up racking up a surprisingly impressive kill count before all is said and done.
The Kind Of Movie You Can’t Find In Theaters
While watching the film, I couldn’t help but think back to the similarly themed airplane thriller, Red Eyewhich also took a wild turn at one point. Carry-On is cut from the same cloth, but today, it stands out as a film that would have been buried in theaters but thrives on streaming. For decades, theaters were filled with thrillers just like this one, mid-budget movies with a fun premise and a few recognizable stars that are more focused on having a good time instead of being Oscar bait or establishing a shared universe.
That’s what does Carry-On so refreshing and why it has resonated so strongly with viewers over the past two weeks. You can fire it up, enjoy yourself for 2 hours, and then that’s the end of the story. Apart from the few B-movies that still get a wide release every year, this kind of movie experience has mostly been priced out of cineplexes, but on streaming and in the comfort of your own home, they come to prosper.
With a budget of $47 million, or one fifth of Red One, Carry-On defied even the most optimistic pre-release expectations. Critics love it, with a fresh score of 87 per cent on Rotten tomatoesand although the public rating was an average 53 percent, it could be because many of today’s public expect a big, big-budget spectacle out of every film and have forgotten that this is exactly the type of thriller that fills theaters every week. in the 90s. It’s predictable, and the performances are all perfectly adequate, but it’s also the most popular movie in the world right now.
Carry-On is streaming on only Netflix.
