In the lead-up to the release of Red Notice, stars Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds promoted the film by calling attention to the massive budget granted by Netflix—$200 million, a record for the streaming service. Most of the budget was likely reserved for the three-headed dragon that is the cast: the aforementioned Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Ryan Reynolds also team up with Gal Gadot, with Rawson Marshall Thurber as writer and director, providing a known formula that’s followed almost to a T but disregards quality at every step of the way.
The story of Red Notice is simple. FBI Special Agent John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) is on the hunt for notorious art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds), and is tipped off to a potential heist by The Bishop (Gal Gadot), a competitor of Booth’s. Booth is caught trying to steal one of three eggs from ancient Egypt, kicking off the events of the film. Thurber’s plot is uninspired; there is nothing being reinvented or even added to the typical heist plot. The “twists” in the movie are things the audience already believes to be true, playing right into expectations. The dialogue is painfully predictable and the backgrounds are very obviously stages or green screens with no attempt to hide them. The movie reads like the fifth Indiana Jones film but without Indiana Jones and audience engagement. The soundtrack is largely unimpressive and the sound editing is unspectacular, meeting the bare minimum necessary of a movie.
Thurber, rather than crafting a compelling narrative, instead chooses to rely on Johnson’s action acumen, Reynolds’s witty charm, and Gadot’s sex appeal to drive the movie, forgetting that none of it ever shows up in the movie. Reynolds spends more time fighting than Johnson, and Johnson’s contribution is akin to a four-year-old playing Call of Duty: clicking down on the mouse shaking it everywhere while holding ‘W’. Reynold’s one-liners are plentiful but make up nearly the entirety of the laughs the film provides; one-liners are great when there are multiple sources of humor, such as the plot or other characters, but if one character is responsible for 95% of jokes, at best a director can hope for is a dry chuckle followed by shuffling of feet and wondering aloud if time is better spent binging Arrested Development for the umpteenth time rather than watching a train wreck without a train. Gadot’s sex appeal is an afterthought with her little screen time and tangential effect on the plot; she spends the vast majority of the film as a puppet master and is therefore offscreen for over half the runtime, making one wonder why Netflix paid her $20 million, the same amount they paid The Rock to act out this 49-17 drubbing. Her role in the movie is nonessential despite what the posters say, and she could have easily been written out with no adverse effect to what is already a sinking ship.
Red Notice ultimately hangs its hat on its cast but does not provide enough material for them to work with, causing the film to suffer. The only saving grace is Reynolds, but even his quips get tiring after a while. It is believed that Netflix has a possible sequel planned, showing yet again how Hollywood sees anything with a pulse to have franchise potential. Red Notice is barely worth watching if you commit yourself to skipping any non-Reynolds dialogue, but it is mind-numbingly boring and unfunny overall.
STARS: 1.5/5