Review of ‘Red Notice’

It’s not hard to imagine the pitch for a film like Red Notice, and why it succeeded. It has it all: The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, a treasure hunt, irreverent and self-aware humor, a duplicitous story with several twisty twists, a buried Nazi artifact vault, a fun Ed Sheeran cameo, etc, etc. And yet for all that everything, Red Notice is just such a nothing of a film. Granted, Red Notice is not my thing in general, but I promise I went in with an open mind.

To me, Red Notice is the worst sort of blender cinema: throw a bunch of current pop culture things into the mix and boom, instant Netflix Original. Red Notice is an over-calculated piece of zeitgeist-filler.

Even just from the trailer I saw for this film before seeing Dune, it’s pretty clear we’ve got an “among thieves” type film on our hands, with several key twists probably involving shifting loyalties between the main characters, and that’s very much what we got. It was all pretty predictable, which is not necessarily a criticism, but in this case it hurts the end product, if only because the entire film is spent waiting for various twists to drop only for those twists to be relatively expected and obviously planted.

As for the action sequences, there’s some kinetic fight scenes and breakneck chases, but the film is probably at its best when it subverts expectations using the Beastie Boys song “Sabotage” to telegraph a chase scene that never comes. The action is unnecessary, and when the film’s most interesting sequence — involving Ryan Reynolds and some scaffolding — comes so early in the film, it’s hard not to be disappointed at such rote set-pieces when another mode is possible.

Ryan Reynolds, meanwhile, spends the film doing his best Ryan Reynolds impression, and the end result is at least slightly less obnoxious than Deadpool, a film whose excruciating boredom was somehow made worse by its star constantly commenting on things like we’re watching Mystery Science Theater. I’m quite tired of this particular style of audience address, the self-aware, lightly-fourth-wall-brushing humor that’s just oh so pleased with itself for using the word macguffin or whatever.

In the long run, I’m not disappointed I watched Red Notice because I do think there’s something definitional about it. It’s not a great example of anything, but it’s a passable example of almost everything that makes modern pop cinema tick.