Netflix’s upcoming film Carry-On — starring Taron Egerton as a rookie TSA agent who gets blackmailed by a shady traveler — plays on viewers’ airport anxiety to deliver a taut-as-a-wire thriller of a sort that’s all too rare these days. Specifically, you can’t help but check out the first teaser below, which the streaming giant released today, and think: Finally, a Netflix film that actually looks like it’s worth watching.
If that sounds overly cynical, let’s not forget that this abominable year for movies has given us bizarro Netflix films like Jerry Seinfeld’s ridiculous Pop-Tarts movie, Jennifer Lopez’s stupid AI film Atlas, and Part 2 of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon that nobody in their right mind wanted or needed. I still want to believe, though, and hope springs eternal that film buffs like me who don’t have time to watch 100 new TV shows will get at least a feature-length gem or two before the year is out — and I’m even going to go out on a limb and say about Carry-On that it looks like it could very well be the one.
Among the reasons to get excited: The movie marks the first collaboration between Netflix and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners, a partnership that was announced back in 2021. Director Jaume Collet-Serra also has a knack for directing propulsive action movies like 2014’s Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson.
Jason Bateman, as the mysterious traveler, is playing against type here as the bad guy, with his character and Egerton’s inexperienced TSA employee caught up in a battle of wits that promises edge-of-your-seat suspense. Long story short, Bateman’s traveler convinces the TSA agent to let him bring a dangerous package onto a Christmas Eve flight. “You have 10 minutes before everybody in this airport dies,” Bateman says at one point in the teaser below. “All you have to do is nothing.”
Bateman’s villain era that began with Netflix’s Ozark has certainly been oh-so-satisfying to watch, and making Carry-On all the more promising is the Die Hard vibe you sort of get from the newly released footage. The cast, meanwhile, also includes Sofia Carson and Dean Norris, which adds two more reasons that I suspect this one is going to rack up quite a large viewership, indeed, once it hits Netflix on Dec. 13.
