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Red Notice
The screenplay is very talky, making the film seem five hours long, but 2021's Red Notice is still a high octane action adventure worth a look thanks to engaging performances from the leads and solid production values.
Apparently, there are three very valuable pieces of art called the Eggs of Cleopatra and some rich sultan somewhere wants to make a gift of them to his daughter. Dwayne Johnson plays an FBI agent named Hartley, who is certain that a top art thief named Booth (Ryan Reynolds) is about to steal one of the eggs. Booth does so, but during the process, Hartley is framed for the theft of the second egg by a thief named The Bishop (Gal Gadot). Hartley and Booth must team up to get the third egg before The Bishop does.
This overblown action epic was written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, whose previous credits include Skyscraper and Easy A, who has seemingly found a way to combine elements from both of these films, but only with middling results. Thurber does possess knowledge of how to mount an action sequence, which he already proved in Skyscraper, though a lot of times here he doesn't provide the payoff that he sets up. There's a part of the story that finds Johnson and Reynolds escaping from a maximum security prison in Russia, built practically in the sky above massive, snow-covered mountains. As the leads execute their escape, we watch with bated breath for one bad guy to fall off this mountain precipice, but it never happened. Why set up this deadly setting and not have a single death occur?
As for Easy A, a movie filled with rich and funny dialogue, Thurber has chosen to really slow down the pacing of this already overlong film by having Johnson and Reynolds share boring monologues about their fathers meant to establish a connection between the characters, but all it really does is slow the film to a point where I found myself stifling the occasional yawn. Not to mention the fact that we're told that Reynolds' character knows where the third egg is but won't tell anybody where it is until the final third of the film.
Every penny of the budget is on the screen, with special shout-outs to cinematography, editing, and art direction, but this film eventually drowns in pretension and intensions it never really lives up to. Even the double twist ending doesn't help. Oh, and there's a sequel coming, which Thurber takes almost ten minutes to set up.
The screenplay is very talky, making the film seem five hours long, but 2021's Red Notice is still a high octane action adventure worth a look thanks to engaging performances from the leads and solid production values.
Apparently, there are three very valuable pieces of art called the Eggs of Cleopatra and some rich sultan somewhere wants to make a gift of them to his daughter. Dwayne Johnson plays an FBI agent named Hartley, who is certain that a top art thief named Booth (Ryan Reynolds) is about to steal one of the eggs. Booth does so, but during the process, Hartley is framed for the theft of the second egg by a thief named The Bishop (Gal Gadot). Hartley and Booth must team up to get the third egg before The Bishop does.
This overblown action epic was written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, whose previous credits include Skyscraper and Easy A, who has seemingly found a way to combine elements from both of these films, but only with middling results. Thurber does possess knowledge of how to mount an action sequence, which he already proved in Skyscraper, though a lot of times here he doesn't provide the payoff that he sets up. There's a part of the story that finds Johnson and Reynolds escaping from a maximum security prison in Russia, built practically in the sky above massive, snow-covered mountains. As the leads execute their escape, we watch with bated breath for one bad guy to fall off this mountain precipice, but it never happened. Why set up this deadly setting and not have a single death occur?
As for Easy A, a movie filled with rich and funny dialogue, Thurber has chosen to really slow down the pacing of this already overlong film by having Johnson and Reynolds share boring monologues about their fathers meant to establish a connection between the characters, but all it really does is slow the film to a point where I found myself stifling the occasional yawn. Not to mention the fact that we're told that Reynolds' character knows where the third egg is but won't tell anybody where it is until the final third of the film.
Every penny of the budget is on the screen, with special shout-outs to cinematography, editing, and art direction, but this film eventually drowns in pretension and intensions it never really lives up to. Even the double twist ending doesn't help. Oh, and there's a sequel coming, which Thurber takes almost ten minutes to set up.