The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot steal only a few laughs in Netflix’s Red Notice
This wannabe streaming blockbuster proves that all the money in the world can’t buy a good time
Film Reviews Netflix
For a quasi-high-concept buddy chase flick about elite, high-tech art thieves, Red Notice is short on dazzling distractions. It certainly looks expensive, which should come as no surprise, given its superhero-movie-sized budget (reportedly the largest in Netflix’s history). We get pricey cars, fancy clothes, lavish sets, and action scenes that probably involved countless VFX man-hours, not to mention a trio of bankable stars. But there are certain things that money can’t buy. As it turns out, an infectious sense of fun is one of them.
Dwayne Johnson, who previously essayed the roles of an ex-Special Forces primatologist in Rampage and a one-legged ex-FBI building-security consultant in Skyscraper, stars as John Hartley, another big, beefy only-in-the-movies type who’s introduced as the FBI’s top psychological profiler of—what else—art thieves. He’s arrived in Rome to catch the notorious Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds), who’s about to steal the first of a trio of jumbo-sized Fabergé MacGuffins known as “Cleopatra’s three bejeweled eggs.”
Booth gets away but only briefly, setting off a convoluted, globe-trotting plot. Hartley apprehends Booth in Bali, gets framed for stealing the egg and swapping it out for a fake, and ends up as Booth’s cellmate in a Russian prison. This has apparently all been the doing of the world’s most wanted art thief, The Bishop (Gal Gadot), who intends to get her hands on all three eggs so she can sell them for a princely sum to an Egyptian billionaire just in time for his daughter’s wedding. Hartley and Booth become unlikely allies. As is usually the case in such situations, there’s a determined Interpol inspector (Ritu Arya) in pursuit.
Twists, near misses, con games, and chases follow; Nazis are eventually involved. With these basic plot ingredients (secrets, antiquities, museums, Third Reich plunder), it’s not hard to imagine how a little goofiness and tour-guide geekery could spruce up Red Notice into a kind of art-world National Treasure, with characters rattling off facts about Gustav Klimt as they decode the conspiratorial symbolism of Portrait Of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Instead, the movie mostly drops the art angle in favor of generic adventure hijinks and gambles on the odd-couple chemistry of Johnson and Reynolds. The former flashes his million-dollar smirk. The latter fidgets, cracks wise, and drops an endless stream of movie references. They’ve done this in other movies. Here, they do it at each other. (Gadot, in the meantime, simply projects her familiar hauteur.)
In between the bog-standard banter, one can hear the creaks of lousy modern screenwriting; all three characters, for instance, get monologues about their respective daddy issues. The action set pieces feel like they were selected at random and dropped into the script. There’s a bullfight, a prison break, a long tunnel chase with a bulletproof vintage Mercedes.
Rawson Marshall Thurber, who previously directed Johnson in Central Intelligence and the aforementioned Skyscraper, has admittedly improved: His camerawork has become less awkward, and there’s even a decent foot chase in the opening sequence. But the scale and timing of Spielbergian spectacle continues to elude him; the larger action scenes feel like frictionless digital imitations of the real thing. Whistling the Indiana Jones theme (as Booth does at one point in a cache of Nazi loot) does not provoke a flattering comparison.
Red Notice earns occasional laughs when it manages to subvert expectations, e.g., a car chase that ends almost immediately with a collision. But for the most part, it replicates only the most predictable aspects of big-studio entertainment: messy pacing, bad pop culture jokes, clumsy lingering close-ups on the logos of various product-placement sponsors. This is the stuff that reminds us that Hollywood movies are made with charts and committees; we don’t enjoy it, but we put up with it in exchange for a good time. Red Notice only has the time part down. The good, like the bejeweled egg, is frequently missing.
111 Comments
I never thought I’d miss the overpaid studio execs who used to design movies by committee. Then the algorithms came.[Terminator opening theme]
Not sure if that’s the big issue with modern blockbusters, or simply that they’ve decided they should just dumb stuff down even more because they’re marketing to the foreign box office now, and explosions don’t need translation or cultural context.
yes this
Dwayne The Rock Johnson: he’s here to dumb it down and he knows Taiwan 🇹🇼 is not a country!
“Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, please tell us your thoughts on Taiwan!”“I think that, when purchasing clothing, trying on is a critical part of that process. Next question.”
Hey, you’re not trying to trick me into saying the n-word, are you?
Screenwriting formulas are also rigid in a very boring way right now. They always have been, but over the last few decades there’s been a push away from careful plots or narrative economy, and improv has mostly replaced the art of the pithy one liner. A movie like this one has no right being anything but a 95 minute bon mot machine where Ryan Reynolds fusses about his suit and Gal Gadot rolls her eyes until the last reel where they literally fall into a giant bed. Then Gadot says, “Is it odd that I’m thinking about my father right now?” And Reynolds says, “Is it odd that I am too?” Roll credits.
Add at least three instances of someone saying “Well, that happened”, and we’ll talk.
That bon mot machine was called Man from UNCLE, and it’s too bad Guy Richie never made a movie after that.
Maybe the joke is going over my head (in which case, my bad), but Guy Ritchie has made three decent movies after that: Aladdin and The Gentlemen, both in 2019, and Wrath of Man, which came out earlier this year.
Man From UNCLE was an awesome movie and in a just world we would have 2-3 equally awesome sequels to it already. But we don’t live in a just world.
I think the co-starring presence of Armie Hammer would have thrown a wrench in those plans even if it had done well in the box office. But I liked it and thought it was respectful to the 1960s show, which isn’t always the case in these sorts of movies (see, or rather don’t, Wild Wild West for what I’m talking about).
Hey, don’t sell American audiences short, pal. They’re plenty capable of encouraging dumbing-down all on their own.
“Explosions are a universal language”- Michael Bay, probably
Listen, and understand. That algorithm is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you watch this movie three months after it comes out.
How I wish ‘The Bishop’ was an easter-egg nod to the Stainless Steel Rat series (which I still can’t believe was never picked up as a movie… imagine prime-era Pitt and Jolie as the DeGriz family…)
Not exactly how I imagined Slippery Jim but absolutely yes please and thank you. I would pay money to see that.
Hopefully a real Stainless Steel Rat movie would have the dialog entirely in Esperanto (the author, Harry Harrison, was an Esperantist and all the characters in the series were supposed to be speaking it).
Holy cow, The Stainless Steel Rat! I haven’t read that series of books in a LONG time and this just brought back the memory of it. You’re right, this would make a great movie/movie series.
Man oh man, The Stainless Steel Rat would make a great series of movies (or series, I guess). Can’t think of any actor that wouldn’t jump at the chance to play Jim DeGriz.‘Course, I also can’t think of an actor who wouldn’t love to play Lorenzo Smythe/John Joseph Bonforte in an adaptation of Heinlein’s Double Star, but that hasn’t happened either. Except in my alternate universe, where Zelazny’s Amber books have been adapted into a three season series.
God, these books. They’re a stew of misogyny and other -y’s but still totally great adventures. Read and re-read a million times when I was a kid. Great sense of desperate city kid makes good on whatever scraps life throws him, and indulges in fun wherever and whatever he can. Love your fan-casting, tho I believe there’s some bad blood there? I would actually take Ryan Renolds and Blake Lively in those two roles. Also, pretty sure everyone in this comment string is over 40 and I’m here for it.
I’d rather it be a nod to Monty Python’s Flying Circus (tho Gal Gadot is a *lot* cuter than Terry Jones…)
So THIS is the piece of shit that came out of people doing 7 day weeks for months?! We never sacrifice for quality, just profit.
Hey, at least nobody died on the set. That’s worth something, right?
Ryan Reynolds is the guy that wins class president in high school. I do not like class presidents.
how many times a day does Reynolds have to shave?
It’s the Homer Simpson effect.
The animation on those early episodes can be a little too stylized, but the way Homer’s stubble stretches and bristles as it pops out is just perfect.
In high school, there was this bloke in my brother’s grade we called “Gringo”, because at 17 he was, no shit, shaving twice a day, and “Gringo” was the most Mexican bandido phrase we knew at the time, because that’s what he looked like:You’d go into the dunnie to take a piss at lunch time, and he’d be there with a can of shaving cream and Gillette Mach 3, scraping off the stubble to get through the final three hours of the day.
cool story…bloke.
About as many times as Jon Hamm I’d guess…
At least Adam Sandler is open about his movies just being and excuse to vacation someplace cool with his kids. So many of these movies just seem a chore but we watch since everything else on the streaming channels is old.
Happy Madison also acts as an employment agency for his friends, so he’s killing two birds with one stone.
You could read a book.
So many of these movies just seem a chore but we watch since everything else on the streaming channels is old.I think that’s the strategy. Just keep throwing things on Netflix that are good enough that you watch them when you’re bored or just want something on TV so that you never quite pull the trigger on cancelling that subscription.
What if you tried out just not streaming stuff anymore? Lots of other things people used to do 10 years ago before this was a thing!
Netflix isn’t even hit or miss at this point with their movies. Most are crap. Occasionally something decent. They just seem like assembly line movies at this point. They hit a random movie generator button. Our next film is…. A caper with the three most likeable stars currently in hollywood! The script doesn’t even have to be good. They just know they will get clicks when people see The Rock, Reynolds and Gal.
It’s weird generally their Series are pretty good but their Original movies are garbage, they have big budgets but never look like big budget movies.
Their production target definitely seems to be good enough rather than just good. I have a feeling that the impressions that they’re better at series is maybe boosted from them buying promising series that other places and smothering or hiding the bad ones in a flood of content.
Preach! I think their budgets mostly get spent on casting a few big leads. The rest is spent on cruddy, TV movie level production values.Afterall Netflix movies are essentially TV movies.
.
It’s all shit, LCD nonsense for people with zero standards. Basic cable has better shit that Netflix.
They’re a 1950’s studio. They crank ‘em out, and occasionally one of them is good, but that’s not what they’re shooting for.
Netflix is on track to put out 51 original movies in 2021. That’s a new movie for every week of the year…3 have been okay, the rest were complete junk. Now i may not be a big fancy entertainment exec, but i don’t understand how this is remotely sustainable or good for business.
If one of them gets a little buzz every quarter, it will drive subs, and once you’re subbed, you’ll probably stay subbed even if you don’t watch that often.
I keep souring on Gadot more and more as an actress. She’s basically the female Arnold Schwarzenegger back in his 80’s-90’s hay-day. Needs a bonkers supporting cast to propel her through most things.
Maybe she’ll age into some funnier and more heartfelt roles, I dunno.
arnold had a natural charisma and star-quality that outshone what language skills he lacked, and in time actually became a pretty solid actor. we’ll see if that ‘death on the nyle’ movie ever comes out, that’s one where she might be tasked with some actual acting, but i don’t think she has any comedic chops to speak of.
She’d be brilliant in a spy-thriller where they’d actually use the fact she was in the IDF (compulsory, but that’s more that can be said for most other performers) to their advantage.
I’m also of the opinion that she makes a better potential villainess than she does a leading lady.
If you’re saying she would work best in a non-speaking background role carrying a gun the way they really carry guns in the IDF then we agree.
She was a fitness instructor in the IDF. Not sure how it might help her to be an action star.
Compulsory military service still means you go through basic training, regardless of what your particular speciality ends up being.
I have friends who have done nothing but logistics in their various branches of various national militaries (including the IDF), and they’re far more fit than the gym bunnies who have never had to go and do anything more than move and lift weights.
Not to be unnecessarily snarky, but who do you think are training the action stars when it comes to the shit they pretend to do in movies? Keanu’s gun work in John Wick stems from being trained by former military; the various physical, non-gun moves is coming from specialists in those particular martial arts. Don’t dismiss Gal just because her two years had her being a fitness instructor. Imagine how good you’d have to be to specialize in being a fitness instructor for people who are specifically trained to be fit, regardless of whether they continue in the IDF or only do their compulsory 2 years.
I was in IDF for 3 years – not anything combat-related, mostly fixing various communication devices. I probably did the same basic training she did – the one for non-combat soldiers. It’s one month (I think even less than that for women) of learning the basics of being in the army – discipline, marching, some shooting, some fitness. Mostly trying to get you familiar with what comes in the next 2/3 years of your life. She must’ve been in a great shape to be a fitness instructor, which is obvious even now. She is tall and good-looking (she was Miss Israel 2004), which in combination with being in a great shape allows her to have a career in action movies. Good for her, I wish her luck and a long and successful career.
That was done already. It was called “Keeping up with the Joneses”. She was Ok in it. Jon Hamm and Zack G played off each other pretty well.
Arnold also possessed a look that made him really stand out from the action stars of decades prior.
Outside of former football players in Blacksploitation movies (like Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Bernie Casey), and someone like a Steve Reeves (another former bodybuilder-turned-actor from the 1950s, but mostly popular in European cinema), you simply didn’t have action stars who had that type of physical build. You combine that with, as you said, his natural charisma along with his drive to become famous, and you had the recipe for a major star (that also coincided with a time period where the expectations of what an action star looked like shifted, from the types typefied by a John Wayne, a Clint Eastwood, a Robert Mitchum, a Lee Marvin, or a Charles Bronson, to guys who looked like action figures and superheroes come to life.
One of the biggest “what-ifs” when it comes to Arnold’s career is whether he’d be as big as he is/was if one person in particular, Lou Ferrigno, wasn’t partially deaf and didn’t have a speech impediment because of it. Not only was Ferrigno bigger and taller than Arnold, but him being Italian and from NYC would’ve brought something that Arnold didn’t (and barring the success of Rocky, might’ve proved to be a stumbling block to Stallone as well).
Age will take away the one thing keeping her career afloat.
“She’s basically the female Arnold Schwarzenegger back in his 80’s-90’s hay-day.”
Sure, aside from the fact that Arnold OOZED charisma.
“a trio of bankable stars” – er… Gadot hasn’t been in the lead role of any hit movie that wasn’t about the world’s most famous superheroine. Her non-WW bankability seems to be untested.
The algorithm strikes back, and the sad thing is that like with that Will Smith movie it will probably work, again. Sigh humanity.I’ve never understood why reviewers say things like “e.g., a car chase that ends almost immediately with a collision.” when they could say “e.g., a surprisingly brief car chase” or something that wouldn’t steal the laugh from the one person who watches this movie after reading this review.
Algorithm…I got music…I got Nathan who could ask for anything more?
Perhaps he avoided “surprisingly brief car chase” because the phase invites unflattering comparisons with Hot Fuzz, the gold standard of surprisingly brief car chases:
Playing an “ex-Special Forces primatologist” with the gravitas that only a Dwayne The Rock Johnson can bring.
Of course the special forces would have primatologists! How else could they battle against forces using gorilla warfare?
I bet there are at least five instances where someone should die or break major bones but will get up and dust themselves off. That seems like SOP for this kind of film.
My personal favorite is “crash through a plate glass window”. Because, ya know, if you did that it would really hurt and also cut you up a LOT.
“Because, ya know, if you did that it would really hurt and also cut you up a LOT.”
Depending on how you went through the window, what you were wearing and how you land, it might hurt and might cut you up a lot or it might not.
TLDR; if you ain’t been through one, don’t pretend you’re an expert on what happens when you do go through one.
hoping this one loops around that it’s so bad and expensive it ends up being fun to watch ironically.
Seriously, have there been any great Netflix movies yet? I cannot name one.
I think Gal Gadot might be bad at this whole acting thing.
Kal-el, no.
*Ka-Lel
You don’t have to be a good actor to be a movie star. I thought she was good in the F&F movie that she was good in (5, I guess? Maybe 6. They all run together. after the first three.). I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything else. (She was pretty funny on SNL.)
Congrats on not seeing Wonder Woman 1984 the movie that literally ruined quite a few peoples Christmases. I agree she’s serviceable in Fast 5 and 6 but she has regressed as an actor.
I haven’t seen either of WW movies. I’ve been waiting for them to come to a steaming service I have, but since I don’t have HBO Max, I guess I’ll be waiting a while. I could get them from the library, maybe I will eventually, but a guy I sometimes work with was an extra in WW84 and he’s pretty insufferable about it, so I can’t say I’m champing at the bit to get to them.
“(5, I guess? Maybe 6. They all run together. after the first three.)“
Four, Five, Six AND Seven.
Man, they really do run together.
I see her as a female Arnold Schwarzenegger. She’s not an actor, she’s a movie star. Put her in the right movie and she’ll shine, but if you ask too much of her she’ll fail pretty miserably. Just gotta give her the right roles.
A Thomas Crown/Italian Job/Pink Panther mashup does sound good on paper.
am i to assume, as i did from the trailer, that this guy gets a haha funny moment where they see his uniform in a mirror:
I like all 3 actors but this looks like shit and believe me I like to watch some shit on the screen from time to time. But this is a movie I have no interest in.
A Rock/Reynolds heist comedy isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever heard (I have no opinion on Gadot), but that’s a pretty low bar to surpass.
And yet I’m gonna watch it and so will the whole world and in a few weeks Netflix will announce that it’s the most watched in Netflix history and they win again and the wheel keeps on spinning.
Or don’t maybe?
I wonder about the sustainability of Netflix burning so much cash to make stuff like this.It seems like Netflix hasn’t learned anything from its own success. The most consistently popular programs on streaming in general have been network shows like Friends, The Office, 30 Rock, Parks & Rec, Breaking Bad, etc. Friends and The Office were so popular that Netflix was paying $100 million a year to keep the rights to stream them. Why is Netflix spending hundreds of millions making mediocre movies like this that are going to be flashes in the pan, instead of investing in a more long term strategy and trying to create something with legs like Friends or The Office?
They’re doing pretty well in buying up K-dramas on the cheap and with a few well lauded original series.
If they can’t make a two-hour action comedy that’s any good, they’re not going to maintain quality over a hundred episode sitcom.
But they’ve been able to make good shows. They just cancel them too soon. And with the money they spend on a big blockbuster movie, they can make several shows, giving them more room to experiment and take risks. Not every sitcom became as popular as Friends or Seinfeld, but sitcoms are cheap to make, at least at the start. And by the time they become popular enough that they need to pay the stars $1 million per episode, they’re already making enough money to justify the cost.
Neflix is like the anti-Showtime. Instead of running good shows into the dirt for 10 seasons, they cancel good shows just as they’re getting great.
“If they can’t make a two-hour action comedy that’s any good, they’re not going to maintain quality over a hundred episode sitcom.”
I like how you said that despite the fact that their original series are much better and better-reviewed than their movies.
I kind of think that critics of Netflix haven’t learned much from Netflix’s success. I mean, you said it yourself: Netflix is successful. And not just run-of-the-mill succcessful. They are on-top-of-the-world, what’s-a-few-hundred-billion-between-friends successful. So they seem to have learned something.I don’t work at Netflix, but I’m guessing that what they’ve learned is that packaging three of the most bankable stars in the world in a generic heist film that strings together some generic action sequences and generic laugh lines is enough to keep worldwide audiences shelling out the $13.99 per month or whatever is they pay.
$18.99 if you want 4k.
Except my whole point is that the making generic blockbuster movies is not the strategy that made them successful. It wasn’t generic action movies with big movie stars that allowed them to acquire and retain their huge audience, it was shows like Friends, 30 Rock, The Office, Parks & Rec, etc. Why do you think Netflix just paid $500 million for a 5 year contract with Sony to stream Seinfeld? And which do you think will be the better investment in the long run? $200 million for Red Notice or $500 million for Seinfeld?
“I wonder about the sustainability of Netflix burning so much cash to make stuff like this.”
I know. At some point the nearly $2B they earn per month won’t be enough to cover the money the spend on movies because, as we all know, Netflix spends billions per month on their originals.
Streaming = direct to DVD, every time.
The best thing about Gal Gadot is all they have to do is point the camera at her and she’s automatically good in the movie.
The Rock starring in a mediocre action/buddy comedy? Someone call CNN.
Rock’s lookin’ old.
Saying he’s starting to look his age is even more cruel.
I find him reasonably likable as a person, but, barring the Deadpool franchise, Ryan Reynold’s presence in any film this days signals that it’s a stinker.
Anyone else groan that they went with “Cleopatras 3 Bejeweled eggs”. Why not Wonder Woman’s 7 antique vases or Gal’s Met Gala cocktail dress?
The best thing about the car crash gag[SPOILERS for a joke early in the film]is that it happens just as Sabotage by the Beastie Boys kicks in (and stops the track dead).Now I bow to no man in my admiration for the Beastie Boys and I love Sabotage, but it is up there with White Rabbit and Fortunate Son as “Great songs that should never be in another movie” and I *hope* its use here was a deliberate joke to that effect.Also, I saw this at the cinema, and Tick…Tick…Boom! is out this week, too, so that’s something at least.
Huh, I must have missed that during my 30 second pee break. I watched the film last night and I don’t remember that scene at all.
Ah, it’s right at the beginning, The Rock is chasing Ryan Reynolds from the scene of the first heist, jumps in a handy sports car, Sabotage boots up and…The Rock gets sideswiped by an ice-cream van or something similar, having driven about 3 feet.
Oooooooh. I must have walked right in after that. The scene I came back to was The Rock standing next to a car in the middle of the road staring off into the distance.
“and I *hope* its use here was a deliberate joke to that effect.”
As opposed to them accidentally deciding the use the song and have it cut off in a comedic car chase sequence?
For my own part I wouldn’t have bothered with this but as a parent whose kid thinks Ryan Reynolds is a god, I appreciated the PG-13 rating. And the movie itself was OK. Detecting a tinge of misogyny in some of the comments about Gal Gadot. She is just as good at playing slight variations on a single type as the other two, and she has that movie star thing of being really, really, ridiculously good-looking, which doesn’t hurt.
“Detecting a tinge of misogyny in some of the comments about Gal Gadot.”
Because nobody could POSSIBLY think she’s anything less than a legend of stage and screen, right?
My biggest problem with the movie wasn’t the double cross. Or the double cross of the double cross. Or even the double cross of the double cross of the double cross. It was the complete lack of chemistry between The Rock and Gal Gadot. There was nothing there. Zero. Neither of them can act.And was it just me, or was 90% of this movie filmed on a green screen backlot? The CGI was glaringly obvious on a 4k TV. I’m really struggling to see where the $200M went, besides salaries for the three leads.
All the pretend globe trotting cost a pretty penny.
Thank you! I watched this and commented that it looked like they had a budget of $20. Where did the money go? Certainly not spent on that scene in the jungle.
(Kinda spoiler)My favorite part is when, in the process of getting the $100 million egg out of the cache of Nazi loot, they shoot the crap out of all the other plunder that could be worth 100 times that amount. Raphael’s “Portrait of a Young Man” alone has a reward offer of $100 million (probably less if it’s riddled with bullet holes, though).
Looks like pure copy/paste from other caper flicks. There’s no creativity anymore.
i mean i thought it was a fun blockbuster movie idk