Carry-On Review

Carry-On was planned as the first film from Amblin's 2021 deal with Netflix, and it plays like the mid-budget studio thriller that deal was meant to keep alive. Taron Egerton is Ethan Kopek, a TSA officer at LAX still stung by his rejection from the police academy. On Christmas Eve an earpiece reaches him, and a voice (Jason Bateman) tells him which bag to wave through, with his pregnant girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson), as the price of refusing.

Jaume Collet-Serra, who made Non-Stop, knows how to cut between a scanner screen, a smartwatch and a sweating face, and he moves fast enough to outrun most of the holes. Bateman underplays a mercenary with the patience of a middle manager, and Egerton is a convincing everyman under pressure. The standout belongs to a subplot: Danielle Deadwyler's detective fighting over a gun in a speeding car, in one unbroken shot that carries through a crash and a rollover.

The last act on the plane strains everything, and T. J. Fixman's script leans on coincidence. Critics were warm, 69 on Metacritic, and by January 2025 it ranked fifth among Netflix's most watched English-language films.