Among the emerging actors of American cinema Taron Egerton stands out for his striking selection of roles, not necessarily played with the finesse that they deserve. Egerton played the iconic musician Elton John some time ago with underwhelming potency.
He is back in this more-messy-than-mass entertainer playing an airport security personnel, Ethan, who is bullied into loading a sinister suitcase on a plane. Just how the terrorist(Jason Bateman) inflicts his will on Ethan is the plot on which the efficacy of the thrill element hinges. Sadly, the thrills are lost in the jostle and bustle of the airport terminal.
Though the physical details of the airport are very impressively staged, the plot is intrinsically daft, replacing authentic suspense with bogus jumpscares that replicate the mild tension you may feel while waiting for the conveyer belt to bring your luggage to safety before you scoot through that door.
Some of the plotting is preposterous. The terrorist’s arm-twisting tactics are not the least convincing, let alone intimidating. How are just two terrorists, mysteriously named The Traveller and The Watcher, able to control the protagonist’s and his colleagues’ exact whereabouts with the threat of shooting them point blank in the melee of the airport?
Having abandoned all sense of proportion at the airport entry, Carry-On goes for the kill with much gusto and little skill. There is no lack of thundering plot devices to keep your interest alive. But it all feels like a half-finished suspense drama that brings the goings-on to a simmer but never quite the boil.
The personal angles in the plot, Ethan’s Daddy issues, his failure to make something of his life and his inability to convince his pregnant girlfriend Nora(Sofia Carson) that he wears the pants in their relationship, all adds to the feeling that Carry-On is a casualty of malnourished plotting . In Diehard, Bruce Willis seemed invincible. Taron Egerton seems like a bit of a wimp. And that’s not what we need in what is meant to be a fast-paced thriller.
Carry-On is too short of wherewithal to be branded a misfire. It never takes off.
