And look I grew up watching like cheesy Mormon missionary made movies, so I’ve seen some terrible movies. In fact, this movie did kind of remind me of those except unlike those, it had like 0 intentional OR accidental comedy.
The beginning was long and slow and bland and after the first fifteen minutes (which btw was for an exposition that could have been done in two scenes had they good writing or better actors or something?) every subsequent ten minutes of the film only existed because people made the dumbest decisions ever, over and over and over because if a single rational decision was made, the movie would have ended.
Look I am totally fine with campy thrillers like “Die Hard”where some suspension of disbelief needs to happen in order to make it more exciting.
This was not that. Imagine that, instead of saying “what would make this movie cooler?” and exaggerating the violence, explosions, or threats for suspense, they thought “how can we make this more frustratingly tedious while keeping the threat level roughly the same at all times.
Anyway, prepare for a rant. I’ll try to keep it relatively spoiler free (I failed, there are spoilers because there are basically only like three plot points lol) and yeah I’m in a mood so this will likely sound worse than it is. Honestly that’s what makes this worse is that if you do ignore the incompetence, it’s still not a good movie.
Let’s start at the beginning. This is going to be a spoiler because the scene is so short, but don’t worry: none of it is important.
This sketchy dude is picking up some mysterious bag from these Russian dudes in a greenhouse kind of front for the mob or something. All in all that’s fine. Setting a gun on the table, fine. Waiting till the guy has told you where the contraband is to kill him and his buddy? Perfectly coherent.
Do you know what isn’t coherent or rational? Lacing money with some toxic substance that kills the guy, then shooting his partner. Sure burning down the place to get rid of evidence is great but uh why the hell would you waste the money if you were fine using a gun? Why wait for his buddy to walk back in and not be more active about it, especially since these guys are bratva and his buddy WAS IN A SAFER LOCATION THAT YOU COULDNT DIRECTLY SEE where he could have GRABBED A GUN or RUN or MADE A PHONE CALL instead of running over to his dead friend WHO HE JUST SAW YOU KILL!
Honestly I was willing to excuse that scene before I learned the rest of the movie was even worse. Not only are there multiple times where grabbing a gun, running away, or making a phone call are options there are multiple times during which THEY HAVE A GUN AND CHOOSE NOT TO SHOOT A CORNERED DEFENSELESS VILLIAN WHILE HE MOCKS THEIR LIFE CHOICES.
You know in superhero movies when the villain gives a monologue when they have the hero captured and it gives the hero time to escape. Imagine that the hero isn’t captured, the villain is cornered, and he’s still just going on a monologue while there is imminent danger to other people and the hero is just kind of there. Sure the hero is acting slightly pissed off but not enough to use this gun he’s holding at a man willing and able to kill hundreds of innocent people if he escapes.
Oh did I mention they’re in an airport… on Christmas Eve… where they keep playing up how busy and horrible it is? Firing guns? Security guards acting suspicious and running around possibly with blood on them while everyone is chill?
Of course the bathroom was empty on the busiest day of the year with multiple hold ups due to a security guard dropped dead mysteriously and a dude—whose peers know he doesn’t drink—got fired for allegedly with no testing or evidence.
Oh and it’s not like the two different dudes who literally tell the main character they know he’s responsible for switching the coffee would ever stand up for their peer. No instead they just talk down to the main character about it as one of them LOSES HIS JOB for something that was done in an area with a fuck ton of cameras. Security cameras that are good enough to let the villains know a guy is doing a voice text on his watch, but not good enough to notice the worst fucking secret switcheroo ever.
Anyway, the whole thing could have been avoided if the dude had decided to do his job and not fuck around. You know like he was super determined to do? Like he was stressed about doing because he was really trying for once and whatnot? Yeah.
Oh and that other TSA agent sitting next to him? Yeah definitely couldn’t hear you talking to no one constantly all fucking night saying stuff about a “threat” or “Is it a bomb?” Or all the other huge alarm words you were saying OUTLOUD all fucking night.
I can kind of excuse the security guard death being seen as an accident and brushed over. See that is the kind of stuff you expect in dumb action movies.
What you don’t expect is that a man who is in a van full of weapons—one of which was a sniper rifle that at one point he had trained on his target through the infinitely many windows and easy openings of the airport—decides to pursue his target ON FOOT and using a tiny fucking POCKETKNIFE! Sure ooh maybe it has neurotoxins but uh WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT TO GET SEEN ON FUCKING CAMERA TO CHASE YOUR TARGET THROUGH A CROWD WHEN YOU COULD ASSASINATE HER FROM A DISTANCE!!
Oh and guess what, he loses her in the airport and ends up TRYING TO RUN HER DOWN IN THE PARKING LOT!
Firstly, how did he get back to his car so fast and know exactly what door she’d come through? Secondly, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU RUN OUTSIDE AND NOT INTO THE ARMS OF SECURITY PERSONNEL YOU KNOW PERSONALLY!!! Hell he even knifes this other tsa agent before she gets away… in the middle of a crowd… there is a very credible threat and instead of running towards her coworkers who are trained and have guns and can call in bigger guns, she runs to a random exit.
Circling back to “there is a very credible threat” THERE ARE MULTIPLE FUCKING CASUALTIES! In a crowded airport… with an initial 911 call and hangup before any of the chaos started. And even at the end of the movie only a single part of the airport is shutdown.
“Oh yeah we have a nerve gas threat that’s very credible in a closed environment densely populated with civilians and also planes that could possibly take it anywhere if these HIGHLY TRAINED AND INFINITELY CAPABLE TERRORISTS have any sort of backup plan. But it’s Christmas so I guess we can’t ground all flights or evacuate the airport or anything.”
Oh yeah and everyone is a fucking vigilante. It’s like no one else exists. Trained TSA agent who only got kicked out of police academy because he lied on a polygraph (which is bunk science and incredibly stupid btw): doesn’t get anyone else involved or ask for any help or try calling for the police on the many occasions he gets a second chance to do so.
Trained cop (or fed? Can’t recall) who find out about the nerve gas and survives an attempted murder and suffers significant trauma: doesn’t call in the real threat, or the fact she nearly got assasinated, or call in for backup till after she reaches the fucking airport.
There’s also just no fucking emotion. Everyone is cardboard. Sure there are some moments where ah look after ten minutes of telling us how you feel you appear a little sad, bravo.
Oh but hey the main guy does a good job looking anxious and throwing up due to stress which I guess is the excuse for not CALLING THE FUCKING COPS WHILE YOU HAD THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY! Call them and throw up at the same time moron!
Oh but don’t worry when the threat becomes even more real and he’s risking his own life (and plenty others because he’s a cocky dumbass now apparently) he’s suddenly not throwing up and is all heroic.
Then in the end it works out and he gets the job he wants for being so smart and cool under pressure despite the fact that four (six?) people, most of whom were his colleagues, are dead because he aided terrorists instead of using a single moment of common sense.
And at the end they’re all smiling as they walk through TSA to see their old friends. That’s dumb but see that is the funny kind of dumb, like the people in those medicine commercials that are smiling and then say something like “I have super-Ebola” See, that kind of stupid in a movie is funny.
Watching a bunch of people do the least smart thing in every circumstance with basically zero humorous circumstances and while they talk about nonsense that isn’t really important enough to care about but isn’t funny or useful for real character development either is just frustrating.
There are a couple of times when he’s getting dissed on that are funny but some of the lines that would be funny just add to this anxious frustration because of the timing.
I can excuse an action movie that is very predictable. I can excuse an action movie where you can fire guns around crowds and somehow no one hears a shot (see John Wick).
But this was just… bad. It really felt like corporate art. Like it felt like everything was AI, writing / acting and all. Except AI probably would have had comic relief.
Like the movie “Red One” feels like it was written by AI and just more corpo bullshit made for money not for entertainment, but at least there were parts that were vaguely humorous or even cliche humorous or just stupid weird.
Carry On had none of that. It was too stupid to be serious but was written/acted too serious to be funny so it was just… irritating.
One last thing that I’d like to add to my rant is that this movie is highly rated! Everywhere. I have no fucking clue how anyone would find this movie enjoyable as an action movie or “thriller” or whatever fucking genre it fails to meet the qualifications of.
(This sounds like targeting/baiting so I’d like to say that this is all still just my opinion and if you do end up liking this movie, don’t let me get in the way of your happiness, who gives a shit what an internet stranger thinks about something you enjoy eh? I just needed to vent.)
Anyway, if you read this, and decide to watch it, maybe going into it knowing it is dull will make the incompetence of the film at least slightly funny/entertaining
Garage motor special $100 off? Hooray!
Now if only I could afford a garage…