Few actors have had a more fruitful partnership with Netflix over the course of its existence than Jason Bateman. Between Ozark and Arrested Development, Bateman has been making stuff for Netflix with regularity for years. Now, he’s got Black Rabbit, in which he plays the chaotic brother to a successful restaurateur.
If you loved Black Rabbit and are looking to get some more Bateman in your life, then Carry-On is the perfect place to start. Here are five reasons it’s worth your time:
It’s a riff on Die Hard
Look, not every movie that riffs on Die Hard is good, but Carry-On is actually one of the better examples. The film follows a TSA agent who feels stuck in his job as he finds himself blackmailed by a mysterious man speaking into his ear.
Bateman plays that sinister villain, a calculating smuggler who has been hired to get dangerous material onto a commercial flight. Bateman proves to be an excellent choice for the role, too, in part because he’s always had a darkness hidden just beneath a much more likeable surface.
Bateman is excellent in it
Although Taron Egerton is the movie’s lead, Bateman is the movie’s standout performance, in part because he plays his villain as someone exacting, but fundamentally practical. He doesn’t want to hurt people or take pleasure in it, but he’ll do it if he has to to achieve his ultimate goal.
To Carry-On‘s credit, this movie also makes Bateman’s villainous Traveler seems like the kind of guy who might actually have a plan for everything. He seems like an actual smart person, which is a harder thing to render on film than you might expect.
It’s incredibly tense throughout
Thanks to expert direction from Jaume Collet-Serra, Carry-On is pretty perfectly paced. Each of its reveals and turns in the plot comes after exactly the right amount of tension has been established, and feels incredibly satisfying for that reason.
Because the movie transitions between acts pretty seamlessly, and because the action feels expertly staged without being overly choreographed, Carry-On feels like the kind of exceptional action movie that we should see far more of than we do. It’s an important reminder, though, that these kind of movies are harder to pull off than they seem.
It follows pretty familiar beats
Part of being a Die Hard riff and is hewing to some pretty well-established story beats. While there are some solid reveals in Carry-On, the broad contours of the story are not exactly a huge surprise. Nothing all that serious is going to happen, and the bad guys aren’t going to get away in the end.
That familiarity can be a problem, but for Carry-On, it feels closer to a relief. This is a movie that is allowing your familiarity with this kind of action movie to work in its favor. Sometimes, you want to be comforted by sitting in a genre that doesn’t feel all that surprising, and Carry-On delivers on that in spades.
It knows how to take advantage of its set
One of the most impressive and underdiscussed elements of Die Hard is the way that movie takes full advantage of being set in a skyscraper that is still partially under construction. The movie moves to different floors and different sets often, which leads to some wonderful variation.
Carry-On does a similar thing, but inside of an airport. The movie knows how to take advantage of all the areas of the airport anyone who flies might be familiar with, even as it also explores a few places most regular people don’t have access to.
