Red Notice is an action/comedy one part National Treasure ripoff, one part Ocean's 11 wannabe. The movie opens on a title sequences explaining the "history" of Cleopatra's three eggs, priceless antiquities. Flashforward to the present and FBI profiler John Hartley(Dwayne Johnson) is on the trail of international thief Nolan Booth(Ryan Reynolds) who's attempting to collect all three. They soon find themselves on the same side and in opposition to another international thief The Bishop(Gal Gadot) in, you guessed it, a race against time!
Johnson and Reynolds bring their considerable charm and humor to bear, and they are clearly having fun(who wouldn't given the globe-trotting locales), but they aren't able to inject much vitality into the derivative DOA script. It's nice to see Gadot trying her hand at this kind of genre, going for a performance with some significant humor, but she doesn't seem particularly comfortable or confident in it and as a result the performance is pretty stilted.
The production is competent if starkly unremarkable. It all feels very cookie cutter, very stock footage, very check list, and this extends to the script. It's as if a think tank or algorithm created it, it has all the components to be a good popcorn flick(charismatic stars- check, wise cracking- check, elaborate heist sequences- check) but the result couldn't be more lifeless and pedantic.
Netflix has produced some incredibly thoughtful/effective small to mid budget dramas and comedies but its attempts at breaking into the "blockbuster" arena has failed and with Red Notice continues to abjectly.
Currently streaming on Netflix.
Don't See It.
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