The last piece of the Christmas Movie Puzzle, 2024. We’ve got an insane Hallmarkish Film, a faith based family film, an indie dramedy, and an animated delight. The last thing we needed was the Die Hard Christmas action entry (I’m ignoring Red One, because well, it sucks). Carry-On is the giant turducken of Christmas movies this year, a movie that could have phoned it in but instead really tried to be something exciting and fun for the boys, like meatception.
Ethan Kopek (Taron Edgerton) has hit a life inflection point this Christmas Eve. His now pregnant girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) hopes Ethan will apply for the police again to get that spark back. He starts by taking more initiative as a TSA at LAX, getting put on the x-ray machines. Bad timing though, because a traveler (Jason Bateman) has decided this is the day to execute his mysterious and dangerous tasks, with Ethan trapped right in the crossfire.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra is the king of the mid-tier Action Thriller genre. No one’s saying he’s Christopher Nolan, but he’s always doing something interesting in his movies, and efficiently getting us entertained in under 2 hours. His ability to generate tension is excellent; the first 30ish minutes is just Taron Edgerton talking to Jason Bateman on the phone, and your heart beats a little faster with each emotionless Bateman response. Taron Edgerton and Jason Bateman have fun with the cat and mouse dialogue, and even look credible enough when they engage in random acts of violence upon one another. The movie makes great use of all non flying parts of the airport, sending us through the guts of the complex as Ethan tries to make sense of what’s going on. Action takes place in bathrooms, behind those locked PIN pad doors, and in the suitcase transferring belly of the airport beast, which somehow are all empty despite the growing amount of police and security reacting to all the mysterious, frequent deaths. Serra prevents the obvious lunacy of the plot from becoming a distraction until the very end, because of how briskly he’s walking you through the plot with his Carry-On.
Serra also has a couple tricks up his sleeve as well. A great action movie should have a highlight setpiece and a satisfying death for the bad guy. Danielle Deadwyler and Logan Marshall-Green are mostly wasted and pointless in this movie, save one thing. They’re part of Serra’s mini-action magic act: I’d never seen a car chase and fight scene shot quite like this one: in the middle of Serra’s tense talking battle of wits, this chase shocks any malaised watcher out of their seat, excited for the mini burst of adrenaline the movie needs to propel you into its big finale. For that finale, we pivot back to Taron and Jason. The last fight is heinous and logically impossible, but the payoff is splendid, as the teasing the movie has been doing about Bateman’s transport is shown just enough that it delivers the way Serra wants it to.
Carry-On leaves you smiling and satisfied, ending with a classic Christmas Song. Even though the holiday is only tangentially used, it’s still a perfectly good entry into the Christmas movie genre, ending a solid 2024 campaign. The sheer breadth of quality choices should please just about everyone, including all the AI’s who will enjoy Red One because they wrote it collectively.