Carry-On is a Lean, Mean Thriller with a Terrific Villain Turn from Jason Bateman

It's Teen Wolf Too like you've never seen him before: playing a non-werewolf!

I love going to the movie theater. It’s one of my happy places. Going to the movies every week has been one of the best parts of writing Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas. I particularly enjoy going to the theater with my ten year old son Declan.

Yet there is nevertheless always some part of me that is secretly and not-so-secretly relieved when a new streaming movie wins the weekly poll and I do not need to leave my house or wear pants to see it.

That’s what they call a win-win situation, particularly if the contenders in the theater are as unpromising as Mufasa: The Lion King and Sonic the Hedgehodge 3.

They’re a sequel and a prequel to movies that I have not seen and have no interest in seeing. Disney’s live-action remakes of semi-recent animated hits seem particularly pointless and unnecessary, but they also make a BILLION dollars so they’re going to keep coming whether we like it or not.

Of the ten top-grossing films of 2024, nine are sequels and one is a prequel (Wicked).

Even in a world where everything is sequelized, prequelized, rebooted and otherwise resurrected, the live-action Disney remakes feel particularly egregious.

So I was relieved when the new Netflix action thriller Carry-On won the poll. I’d heard good things about it and was intrigued by the casting of Jason Bateman as the bad guy.

That man’s last name is literally one letter removed from “Batman” so it’s unsurprising that he’s generally played heroes, good guys, and wisecracking smartasses.

The 2015 thriller The Gift, which Joel Edgerton wrote, directed, produced and starred in, made magnificent use of Bateman’s air of smarmy condescension by casting him against type as a heavy.

In Carry-On, Bateman is skin-crawlingly effective as a cold-blooded operative billed as “The Traveler” who makes Christmas Eve the most dangerous time of the year for Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton), a TSA officer with a pregnant girlfriend.

Our everyman hero is underemployed working security at LAX. In movies like this it’s okay to struggle professionally or not make a lot of money as long as you have aspirations for something more.

Ethan wanted to be a police officer, but was discouraged when he was rejected by the police academy. His loving, pregnant girlfriend wants more for the father of her baby so she gently encourages him to give law enforcement another chance.

This is standard-issue stuff. Ethan is an underachiever and ashamed but fate alternately smiles warmly and scowls angrily in his direction when he is afforded an opporunity to both commit and prevent crimes. He has a chance to be a criminal as well as a crime-fighter.

The Christmas Eve rush complicates Ethan’s precarious predicament when he picks up an earbud through which The Traveler issues instructions and demands.

The Traveler is disconcertingly matter of fact dealing with an earnest young man he plans to manipulate and control as a means of achieving his sinister, enigmatic ends.

Bateman is so good as an ominous, unseen threat oozing oily guile that it almost seems unfortunate that the role is not voiceover-only. Bateman accomplishes so much through his delivery that he doesn’t need to ever be an onscreen presence to make a big impact.

The Traveler fancies himself just a man doing a job for money but he takes malicious joy in making the worst day of Ethan’s life progressively more and more impossible through his sinister machinations.

Bateman’s performance benefits from efficiency, and economy. The Traveler never says a word more than is absolutely necessary, though he makes a speal point of getting inside Ethan’s mind so that he can manipulate him more effectively by taking a malevolent interest in his personal and professional life.

Carry-On takes its cues from Bateman’s chilling performance as a homicidal pragmatist who thinks nothing of murdering anyone who gets in between him and his objectives.

Black Adam/Jungle Cruise/a bunch of identical-seeming Liam Neeson vehicles director Jaume Collet-Serra comes back nicely from the epic boondoggle that was Black Adam.

Carry-On is the antithesis of Black Adam. It’s as lean, mean and minimalist as the ill-fated Dwayne Johnson vehicle was hokey, overwrought and underwhelming.

Danielle Deadwyler costars as Elena Cole, a smart, tough police officer who figures out that something is awry at LAX on Christmas Eve. She has to outwit The Traveler and his minions to help keep him from smuggling a nerve agent onto the plane that could result in massive casualties.

Like Die Hard, which it sometimes recalls, Carry-On is a Christmas movie that gets an additional charge from the juxtaposition of gritty tough guy action and Yuletide schmaltz.

The Christmas element of Carry-On finds its purest, kookiest expression in a fight scene in an automobile cheekily scored to “Last Christmas.”

There may be an actual movie called Last Christmas, based on the Wham! perennial, but Carry-On nevertheless owns the song.

Carry-On opens stronger than it closes. It probably does not need to be two hours long. A 90 minute version of Carry-On would be ideal but the filmmakers have a lot of plot to deal with.

This is the kind of high-concept foolishness that makes less sense the more you think about it. The Traveler’s motivations and grand plan are a little anti-climactic but as long as you don’t think too hard, or at all, Carry-On is a blast.

I like action movies but being profesionally obligated to watch and write about every movie where Nicolas Cage and John Travolta wave around a gun and play cops or criminals has affected my feelings about the genre as a whole, and not in a positive way. Cage, and, to a much lesser extent, John Travolta have made some great action movies as well as a whole lot of stinkers.

Carry-On reminded me of other sleepers that take place primarily in one location, like Ambulance, Phone Booth and Red Eye.

The first product of Amblin’s deal with Netflix is a Christmas winner that accomplishes exactly what it set out to do. And I didn’t even have to leave my home to enjoy it!

Carry-On might not be a Christmas miracle but it is a very pleasant surprise.

3.75 Stars Out of 5