The makers of Carry-On clearly fall on the “pro” side of the famous and played-out “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” debate, demonstrating their eagerness to subject another movie to that sort of debate. However, the pro cohort figures to have considerably less ammunition, pun intended, when it comes to this film. The moment to moment in Carry-On is so devoid of actual Christmas flourishes, it seems all it would have taken to retrofit an ordinary action movie (emphasis on “ordinary”) into this “Christmas movie” is to reshoot one or two scenes where Taron Egerton wears a Santa hat. Only because the movie begins with Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” do we recall we were expecting Christmas fare – the Los Angeles International Airport setting deprives of us of our usual weather signposts – and the needle drops continue to do that work throughout.

We’ve established Carry-On is not a good Christmas movie, but it could still be a good action movie, especially with Jaume Collet-Sera showing his capability in this form over a 20-year career featuring two Liam Neeson action movies and a variety of other decent films. In fact, his Neeson movie Non-Stop, about an air marshal quelling a terrorist thread on a transatlantic flight, is the most direct template for Carry-On, complete with a hyphen in the title and everything. It’s also set in the world of terrorism and the world of commercial air flight. Only Carry-On never gets off the ground, literally or figuratively, preferring to unspool its entire running time at LAX in a series of increasingly absurd events. So no, it’s not a good action movie either. (If you want to call Carry-On more of a thriller, go ahead – but that just takes its genre success rate to 0-for-3.)

Egerton plays Ethan Kopek, a TSA officer whose job it is to inspect suspicious bags as they go through the scanner before they are allowed on board an airplane. He’s not doing the job very well, as we learn during a chewing out from his boss (Dean Norris) that he’s never been promoted and that his desire to do the job is in question. Ethan should be looking to hold on to his employment, as he’s got a child on the way with his girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson), a senior customer service representative for an airline at LAX, who encourages him to re-apply for the police academy. However, if he was not a successful candidate the first time, one wonders whether the events of this particular Christmas Eve will end his prospects for good.

Ethan has been left an ear bud and texted to insert it as soon as possible. On the other end of the call is a man who is never named, but who we will recognise as Jason Bateman. Bateman tells him they have Nora in their crosshairs and will kill her unless Ethan allows one particular bag by one particular traveller to escape the screening process without further inspection. All he has to do is nothing, Bateman says, once the traveller is lined up in his queue. However, Ethan’s been doing nothing for too long, and he can’t have whatever’s in that bag on his conscience. We’ll learn soon enough what it is.

Even in an airport as big as LAX, the limitations of the setting are revealed early on in Carry-On. Whether Ethan’s role in the conspiracy – yes, there are other unwitting participants – is carried off successfully or not, it should not require more than about a crucial 15-minute period involving this one customer interface. Of course, Collet-Sera has to make two hours’ worth of movie, and has to have Ethan come into contact with his adversary on multiple occasions, beyond Bateman giving us the latest in a long-line of movie villains who use a hidden earpiece to compel our hero to do things against his moral code. What usually happens in this scenario, and definitely happens in Carry-On, is that the hero’s attempt to defy the man with the upper hand should have gotten the hostage killed four or five times over, so his actions are characterised more by brazenness than cunning.

We expect a little bit of the implausible and the convenient in an action movie, but Carry-On calls attention to these more than other movies by how dumb its dialogue is. There’s a moment where Bateman, always known for his ability to deliver wordplay with a sadistic edge, senses Ethan has a question to ask him. So Ethan asks “Are you a terrorist?” If Ethan couldn’t make it at the police academy, then writer T.J. Fixman probably also flunked out of screenwriting school. No TSA officer, even a bad one, would need to ask such a question; if you are being forced to do something against your will to save the life of a loved one but potentially endanger the lives of many others, then the person requiring you to do that is a terrorist whether he chooses to define himself as that or not.

The rest of the dialogue is similarly untrustworthy of the audience to comprehend nuance, but the real problem is just how idiotic it is that Ethan appears to have the run of LAX without raising an eyebrow from other TSA officers and the police. There’s only so many times a TSA officer can sprint through an airport without that very action causing panic and a lockdown, yet Ethan might exceed that threshold by a half-dozen sprints. By the time he’s commandeering luggage trucks and the like – driving a luggage truck being a standard part of TSA training – the whole thing has gotten very silly.

Assuming the Reginald VelJohnson role from Die Hard is Danielle Deadwyler, playing an LAPD detective who accounts for the only sequences outside the airport. Her considerable gifts as an actor are neutered by this material as well. She factors into the one sequence in which Collet-Sera really tries to show his stuff as an action director, involving the grappling for control of a steering wheel at high speed on one of LA’s freeways. (Never mind that you likely would never achieve high speed on an LA freeway, full stop, but especially at Christmastime.) The continuous sequence should be bravura, but shows its digital stitches, and features an incredibly stupid decision by her character that is sadly par for the course in this film.

This plane could still be landed, so to speak, in a satisfying way, but that isn’t part of this film’s holiday plans either. There’s a strange lack of urgency and dramatic stakes to any hostage situations that arise, and the final confrontation peters out with all the appeal of a glass of egg nog left to spoil in the Los Angeles sun. It isn’t that easy to make a good Christmas movie or a good action movie, and perhaps the ones that try listlessly to combine them are worse off than either would be on its own.

 

Carry-On is currently streaming on Netflix.