Review: Red Notice (2021)

Red Notice

Rating

Director

Rawson Marshall Thurber

Screenplay

Rawson Marshall Thurber

Length

1h 58m

Starring

Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Ritu Arya, Chris Diamantopoulos

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Original Preview

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Soundtrack

Poster

Review

Familiar formulas can still be fun with the right chemistry. Red Notice takes the treasure hunting premise and tries to spin it together with thriller and comedy elements along with new blood in the guise of three actors who have benefited greatly from their various previous co-stars, but who don’t quite jibe with their new compatriots.

The film stars Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Gal Gadot in a predictable plot about the world’s greatest thief attempting to collect three golden eggs at the behest of an Egyptian billionaire who promises a massive payout to whomever brings them to him. Reynolds plays said world’s greatest thief who may already know where the one of the three eggs hides and is working on obtaining the second as the film opens. Johnson plays an American police detective who wants to stop Reynolds’ and ultimately enlist his help in bringing down the other world’s greatest thief, Gadot.

The plot has many twists and turns as we’ve come to expect from these types of films and so many of them have been done better. The gold standard is Raiders of the Lost Ark, which pit Indiana Jones against Nazi baddies wanting to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Like in that film, this one deals with a fictional artifact and even involves the Nazis in a fitting, yet obvious way.

Reynolds is at his best when working alone. When not soloing a film, having a straight man foil can give him someone to riff off of, but his skills are better used against actors who know how to cede presence to him. Johnson, on the other hand, does poorly when not surrounded by much funnier actors. Further, he doesn’t do well in scripts that aren’t written to his strengths, especially ones as contrived as this one. Gadot has a terrific presence and she comes off decently in this picture, but she isn’t given much to work with, taking a one-dimensional character and giving it something of a flourish.

This is a film awash in bland characterizations built on archetypes and given no room to expand, grow, or breathe. Even the best actors couldn’t have given Rawson Marshall Thurber’s creations any vibrancy. Reynolds is the only one of the trio who is a gifted actor and that he gets his one-liners off and still his character doesn’t burst out of the screen, which speaks to the mediocrity of the script and Thurber’s paint-by-numbers directing using the wrong palette.

If you’re looking for fun that doesn’t require thought, Red Notice could be for you. If you want some substance to your fun that calls to memory Spielberg’s Indiana Jones films or even the weaker, but still engaging, National Treasure movies, then this isn’t your movie.