Three appealing stars lift action-comedy
You can’t blame actioncomedy filmmaker Rawson Marshall Thurber for hitching his wagon to the star that is Dwayne Johnson.
The wrestler-turnedaction star is this giant mass of muscle and odd charisma, and Thurber’s two most recent efforts — 2016’s “Central Intelligence” and 2018’s “Skyscraper” benefited from the massive presence of the artist formerly known as “The Rock.”
It’s not surprising, then, to see the two collaborating again on “Red Notice,” a romp about two rival art thieves and the lawman trying to arrest them.
Written and directed by Thurber, “Red Notice” certainly benefits from having Johnson, as well as its female lead, “Wonder Woman” star Gal Gadot. However, as with “Central Intelligence,” which co-starred the hilarious Kevin Hart, it gets its biggest lift from another male star: Ryan Reynolds.
Like Hart, Reynolds can generate solid laughs with so-so material, and “Red Notice” has so-so material to spare. Thurber’s writing is, let’s say, shaky. It’s not so much that the movie’s increasingly silly plot barely holds together — it does, kinda, sorta, but it’s probably best if you don’t think about it too much — but instead that most of the one-liners aren’t all that clever. Reynolds crushes them. He portrays Nolan Booth, one of the top art thieves in the world. Johnson’s John Hartley, who’s the FBI’s top profiler, is in Rome to stop Nolan from swiping one of three incredibly valuable ornate egg-shaped works that once belonged to Cleopatra.
Hartley pursues Booth throughout a museum, eventually seemingly cornering him.
“I know you,” Booth says sarcastically. “You’re the slow, bald guy who’s been chasing me.”
Booth slips away, but, two and a half days later, is greeted by Harley in Bali. The FBI man hands the thief and the egg over to his European contact, Inspector Urvashi Das (Ritu Arya of “The Umbrella Academy”), and plans to return to the United States.
Soon, though, Das has reason to suspect Hartley of being in cahoots with Booth — the egg in her possession proves to be a fake — and arranges for both of them to spend time in a decidedly unpleasant Russian prison.
There, they are visited by “The Bishop” (Gadot),
Booth’s biggest rival and the person who led Hartley to him. She now possesses the egg and says she soon will have the second, as well. What she needs is the location of the third, which Booth claims to know. Booth refuses to help her and subsequently enters into an uneasy alliance with Hartley to find the egg and help clear his name.
We get some mildly enjoyable sequence at the prison before the Muscle and the Mouth are hot on the trail of The Bishop. All three will become entangled with the wealthy and dangerous Sotto Voce (Chris Diamantopoulos), who holds the second egg. Crashing a masquerade ball at Voce’s estate, Hartley finds a reason to dance with Bishop as Booth works behind the scenes on the all-important theft.
“We both know that this whole thing is going to end with you in handcuffs,” he says.
“Promises, promises,” she playfully responds.
“Red Notice” is chock full of bits of banter, and it’s all perfectly pleasant.
Again, the movie’s highprofile trio helps sell the gags, if Reynolds (“Free Guy,” “Dead Pool”) does so with the most gusto. Both Gadot and Johnson — who count “Fast and Furious” entries “Fast Five” (2011) and “Fast & Furious 6” (2013) among their credits — are enjoyable all the same.
One funny moment comes when Harley, surrounded by criminals, announces that The Bishop is under arrest.
“Oh my God,” Booth says in disbelief. “Read the room.”
Although we are apt to forgive it, Thurber does struggle to tie everything together in the end, after a turn or two.
Plus, the movie’s title doesn’t really make sense until the final moments — when it’s clear the parties involved would love to make a sequel. Even though early on we get an on-screen definition of a red notice — the highest level of arrest warrant issued by Interpol — it seems likely this movie was called something other than “Red Notice” for a significant part of its lifespan.
A follow-up to “Red Notice” would be no highlevel occurrence, but we’d have no objections. Given that there’s nothing approaching exceptional about this little adventure, we’ll just mark that down as a possibility in pencil, not red ink.
“Red Notice” is rated PG-13 for violence and action, some sexual references, and strong language. Runtime: 1 hour, 56 minutes.