Red Notice Review

With a cast including Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds, Netflix's would-be blockbuster "Red Notice" has all the grandiose excess of an actual blockbuster, but it lacks the heart, chemistry, and purpose to be anything but a way to spend a lazy afternoon. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but jeez, look at that all-star cast! There is no reason for the flick to be as downright unspectacular as it is, but here we are.

The plot, which is both complicated and basic, has us following FBI agent John Hartley (Johnson) working alongside "the most prolific art thief in the world" Nolan Booth, played by Reynolds (or is he the second most; it doesn't matter) to get to Cleopatra's three eggs ahead of The Bishop (Gadot), the other "most prolific art thief in the world." People get arrested, characters escape, folks are double-crossed, while we deal with outlandish twists involving Nazis (Nazis!) moments of tomb-raiding and heists, all the good stuff, nestled safely within the span of about two hours. But the parts far exceed its sum, as the general template exists as such: exposition happens, action happens, and then its onto the next location. 

And that's fine! James Bond movies do it all the time, but again, look at the cast! And that's only the three billed on the movie poster! Where things crumble on the most simple entertainment level is the spectacle, which is surprisingly perfunctory. This is a very expensive piece of media, yet aside from an opening chase in a Rome art exhibit, the CGI is so obvious that you wonder why The Rock even bothers working out, computers could just digitally add outrageous muscle mass. Bond's best flicks feature some of the most exciting scenes, things that haven't been done before or done with such grace or on such scale or with so much forward momentum. "Red Notice" just sorta has some very famous (and even more expensive) people doing things in front of a camera and greenscreen in a variety of places.

And these should be exotic, exciting places, from Rome to Argentina and others, but it amounts to one of three possible realities: a nice building, a decrepit building, or outside. The international escapades serve as nothing but to change the backdrop to see more of what just happened in last country: pedantic banter between our odd couple of male heroes. Both Reynolds and Johnson can be funny guys, and aside from a few bits involving their "on again, off again" bromance, their quips just sort of come out of their mouths and sit there. Gadot gets even less to work with, as if her contract only allowed her to walk around like a sex object, even during hand-to-hand fisticuffs.

The Egyptian plot device means obligatory shots of desert, which called to mine the goofy exploits in 1999's "The Mummy," which is far better, Booth's and Hartley's daddy issues and the whole Nazi (Nazi!!) involvement riffed on "Indiana Jones," which is far, far better, only it's not smart enough to acknowledge that "The Mummy" copies "Indiana Jones, "which in turn copies James Bond. 

In all honesty, though, perhaps is most reminiscent of 1994's sublime "True Lies" with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, which also lifted from Ian Fleming's franchise but with the promise of humor, the time's biggest stars, the most breathtaking sequences, and it mostly delivered. "Red Notice" should be returned to sender, repackaged and they can try again.