Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
An airport security officer races to outsmart a mysterious traveler forcing him to let a dangerous item slip onto a Christmas Eve flight.
Carry-On is a slick, well-paced airport thriller that leans heavily into familiar Die Hard-esque Christmas action territory. The blackmail premise is efficiently constructed and keeps tension reasonably taut, though it traffics in well-worn genre beats — the everyman hero under pressure, the cool menacing villain, the ticking-clock escalation. Taron Egerton delivers a capable lead performance and Jason Bateman is effectively sinister, but neither performance transcends the material. Cinematographically it's competent Netflix action fare — functional and clean but visually unremarkable, with little distinctive visual identity. Novelty is limited; the airport-siege/blackmail setup is a well-mined thriller subgenre and the film adds little conceptually new to it. The ending resolves satisfyingly enough for the genre but doesn't surprise or resonate beyond its immediate mechanics. A solid crowd-pleaser that delivers genre entertainment without meaningfully elevating it.