Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” plays out as we pan down from the sky to find a mysterious man we’ll know only as Traveler (Jason Bateman) arriving to make a deal for an ominous suitcase, murdering everyone on sight before he acquires it. Within moments, Jaume Collet-Serra establishes the new Netflix action thriller Carry-On as festive fanfare that doesn’t fuck around. Having spent the last half-decade navigating the studio blockbuster minefield with Jungle Cruise and Black Adam, Collet-Serra’s latest sees the director return to what he does best: a mid-budget programmer with genuine, everyday characters in drastic situations and a little more on its mind than you’d expect.
Traveler, played by Bateman with ruthless efficiency and sinister smarm, refers to himself as a “freelance facilitator.” His latest job: get that suitcase through airport security and onto a plane for surely nefarious means. He’s put together a meticulous plan, but an obstacle has been thrown into the mix: the TSA employee he expected to be at the security check scanning bags has been replaced by his colleague Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton), and Ethan is about to prove much harder to deal with than anticipated.
It’s Christmas Eve at LAX, and Kopek has recently learned his girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) is pregnant, causing him to reconsider his life and seeking opportunities to get ahead at work. As the holidays often deliver, Carry-On presents a mixture of wholesome reminders of those we cherish (Traveler threatens to execute Nora if Ethan doesn’t let the bag pass) and the capitalist hellscape we all must endure to make it through another day (a baby on the way means Ethan needs to start working harder to get a promotion and higher salary).
The real rub that has motivated Ethan on this merry eve, though, is thinking about his station in life, how he’s simply letting it all pass him by. After being rejected by the police academy, he’s just been toiling away, miserable at his middling TSA job that he’s settled for to be closer to Nora, the only thing he cares about. The pregnancy has awoken something in him—a self-determination to be a better man, to fight for what he believes in—and that’s the last thing Traveler needed as he tells Ethan, “All you have to do is nothing.”
Egerton is a convincing everyman hero, though Ethan proves remarkably resourceful. As he and Traveler trade volleys in their attempts to assert control over the other, T.J. Fixman’s script keeps one guessing as to how Ethan might wiggle his way out of each new scenario. Collet-Serra’s gift for placing us in these moral predicaments and high-anxiety circumstances proves itself again here, as does his knack for creatively maximalizing limited environments. Carry-On takes place almost entirely within the confines of LAX, using an actual retired airport for the set and giving us that tactile sensation as characters maneuver their way through airport lounges, restaurants, gate checks, metal detectors, and baggage claims. The stress of holiday travel surrounds them at every moment, the background filled with civilians who remind us of the threat that Ethan is aiming to quell.
We’re periodically taken outside the airport to check in with Detective Elena Cole (a sturdy Danielle Deadwyler), who’s following a series of clues leading her towards LAX. This presents us with Carry-On’s most energizing action sequence: a digitized one-shot fight scene inside of a moving car on a highway that leaves a bevy of carnage in its wake. Collet-Serra consistently balances these mega-setpieces with quiet, intense spells of suspense utilizing the claustrophobic environment and deft skills of his ensemble cast. The first act largely finds Egerton sitting in a chair as he and Bateman trade dialogue over an earpiece, and it’s as thrilling as any gunplay that comes later down the track.
Carry-On keeps you on the edge of your seat with its myriad turns, always being sure to ground itself in realistic characters who offer the opportunity to question what we would do if presented with a similar scenario. It’s a welcome return to Collet-Serra’s sweet spot, a throwback to ’90s thrillers and a new Christmas crime classic in the vein of Turbulence and Die Hard—or Die Hard 2: Die Harder, if you want a festive triple-feature of Christmas crime thrillers in aviation environments.
Carry-On is streaming on Netflix on December 13.