We’ll say it once, and we’ll say it again: Spanish filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra has never met a transportation thriller that he didn’t love. He’s directed “Non-Stop” with Liam Neeson, about a Federal Air Marshal who must find the killer on an international flight from New York to London; he’s directed “The Commute,” staring Neeson, again, of course, about a man unwittingly recruited into a murder conspiracy after meeting a mysterious woman while on his daily train commute, and sure he’s dipped and detoured, “Jungle Cruise” (2021) and “Black Adam” (2022). Still, he’s right back into another trains and planes suspense thriller with the new Netflix film, “Carry-On.”
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Written by TJ Fixman, the movie is something of a cat-and-mouse thriller between a shadowy airplane passenger and the dangerous device he gets on board the flight by extorting a TSA agent in a tough, thankless job. The film stars Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominee Taron Egerton (“Rocketman,” the “Kingsman” franchise) as the Transportation Security Administration officer and Jason Bateman (“Ozark,” “Arrested Development”) as the threatening antagonist. “Carry-On” also stars Sofia Carson (“Descendants”), Danielle Deadwyler (“Till,” “The Harder They Fall”), Sinqua Walls (“White Man Can’t Jump”), Logan Marshall-Green (“Upgrade”), Theo Rossi (“Luke Cage”), Josh Brener (“Silicon Valley”), and Dean Norris (“Breaking Bad”).
In “Carry-On,” Edgerton’s TSA agent, Ethan, is unhappy at work in the airport, directionless, and disillusioned with his life and career. But this terrible incident brings out the best in him, and in a “Die Hard”-like situation, he rises to the challenge.
“Ethan is a relatively ordinary person thrust into an extraordinary situation, and how he adapts and grows to save his loved ones over the course of the film ends up making him pretty extraordinary, even though what he discovers is that being extraordinary is actually just being himself,” Collet-Serra told EW this week in a teaser interview giving some context and flavor to the thriller.
Here’s the official synopsis:
A young TSA agent fights to outsmart a mysterious traveler who blackmails him into letting a dangerous package slip onto a Christmas Eve flight.
Produced by Dylan Clark, exec producers on the film include Holly Bario, Brian Williams, Jaume Collet-Serra, Seth William Meier, and Scott Greenberg. Netflix will release “Carry-On” on December 13. Watch the first trailer below.
