RED NOTICE
★★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 117 MINS
DIRECTOR Rawson Marshall Thurber CAST Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Ritu Arya
PLOT After foiling a plot by notorious art thief Nolan Booth (Reynolds) to steal one of Cleopatra’s priceless golden eggs, Special Agent John Hartley (Johnson) is framed for said egg’s subsequent theft by his informant, another notorious art thief known as The Bishop (Gadot). Forced into an uneasy alliance with Booth, Hartley races to prove his innocence.
IRONICALLY FOR A movie that’s all about twists, turns, cons and double-crosses, Rawson Marshall Thurber’s Red Notice is rather lacking in surprises. And we mean that in the nicest possible way.
Story-wise it is a patchwork pastiche of
To Catch A Thief, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Bond, with a bit of National Treasure and
Raiders Of The Lost Ark thrown in for good measure (Ryan Reynolds even whistles the
Raiders theme at one point). Featuring a frantic museum foot-chase, a prison break from a mountain-top fortress, and a hi-tech heist at an überswanky villains’ masked ball, it hits all the spy/crime-caper/archaeological-adventure beats you’d expect.
Meanwhile, its main selling-point is the charismasplosive double act of Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds, and neither deviates even a micron from his long-established and widely beloved on-screen persona. As the wrongfully accused art-crime-specialist fed, Johnson is steadfast and serious, hiding a big, warm heart beneath those bigger, hard pecs. Reynolds riffs and wisecracks as the glib thief, tossing around probably improv’d one-liners, often delivered at comedy-whisper level.
Occasionally, they loosen the bromantic banter (served with an eye-rolling side-order of daddy-issue confiding) to make way for
Gal Gadot as wily antagonist The Bishop. But while she’s always seemingly a step ahead of them and clearly more capable, Gadot remains a supporting player amid all the film’s globetrotting antics, only popping up every now and again to mess with their plans and join in a set-piece. This is firmly The Dwayne ’N’ Ryan Show.
So, it’s very familiar territory, whether you’re a fan of the genre or the stars. Thanks to those stars’ incredible likeability, it’s comfort-viewing primarily, with Johnson and Reynolds bickering and battling in a variety of exotic locations, including Rome, Bali, Valencia, and a jungle (Johnson’s sixth now?) in Argentina. Despite reaching for James Bond/indiana Jones-like levels of international activity, however, the film suffers from a visually unexciting sense of being soundstage-bound and wrapped in green screens. It’s packed with visual effects and they really do show, from ersatz explosions to a few obvious digital doubles, which have no truck with the laws of gravity. This creates a level of artificiality which significantly lowers the stakes, making it feel like less a worldspanning adventure than a knockabout in a really expensive playground.
Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber is a better maker of comedies (Dodgeball:
A True Underdog Story, We’re The Millers)
than he is action movies (the Johnson-fronted Skyscraper), so it’s as a comedy that Red Notice
works best. And given this is his third collaboration with The Rock (the first being another kinetic buddy pic, Central Intelligence),
he knows how to get the best out of his big leading man. Which is quite simply to just let him get on with doing what everyone loves him doing — while teaming him up with someone who’s also left to play to his strengths. Though flawed, Red Notice is at least a solid blast of lightweight fun. And there’s nothing wrong with that.