To loosely paraphrase from memory, New York Magazine writer Alison Willmore recently said on Twitter something to the effect that the Netflix heist action-adventure film “Red Notice,” acts as a challenge to the notion that the movie stardom is still alive and well. That is to say, for a movie that features Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Gal Gadot—three of the biggest personalities and stars on the planet—the utterly lifeless, disposable, and bland, “Red Notice” doesn’t feature a lot of personality and hardly registers a pulse.
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Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (“Central Intelligence,” “Skyscraper”), but seemingly helmed by what a Wal-Mart commercial for what an action heist film might be, “Red Notice,” is utterly throwaway, middle-of-the-road, inoffensive, and flavorless. Costing $200 million (thanks to the cast), ironically, not much of that price tag looks like it ended up on the screen, as lame, generic, tepid VFX and greenscreens seem to mar every scene. So while “Red Notice” wants to have sections that look like they are ripped out of the “Indiana Jones” franchise (the entire third act), none of them ever resemble them in either a cinematic, tangible, or tactile sense. “Raiders Of the Lost K-Mart” is about as close as it gets.
Part odd couple buddy-comedy, part heist movie, part action-adventure tale, “Red Notice” centers on the relationship between two men, Dwayne Johnson as John Hartley and Ryan Reynolds as Nolan Booth. Hartley is a non-nonsense FBI profiler and Booth is regarded as one of the top art thieves in the world. The film takes its title from the Interpol terms for a “red notice,” a global bulletin alert posted to hunt and capture the world’s most wanted. And after Nolan steals some precious, sought after red-eggy jewel thing from Egypt that’s worth billions, a red notice is issued, which sends Hartley to Europe to hunt down Nolan. It also perks the notice of a rival thief known as the Bishop (Gal Gadot), consider the premiere art thief in the world and soon to become a thorn in both men’s sides. Soon, through some dumb machinations not even worth mentioning, the Bishop steals the egg after Nolan is caught by Hartley, Hartley is framed and both men find themselves trapped in a Siberian prison thanks to law enforcement agent Inspector Urvashi Das (Ritu Arya).
Blah, blah, blah, try and break out of jail and then track down this red egg, try and reunite it with two other red eggs and then sell it all for a king’s ransom to some wealthy Egyptian baron. The problem is The Bishop has two of the eggs for her kingpin boss Sotto Voce (Chris Diamantopoulos), but the third eludes the entire world. No one seems to know where it is aside from Nolan Booth who will soon be kicked, punched, and tortured (along with his reluctant buddy Hartley) for the information.
“Red Notice” quickly becomes a) Hartley must clear his name movie, b) Booth joins along for self-interested motivations, and c) The Bishop thwarts them at every turn, but also has her own mysterious agenda in contrast with everyone, including her bosses.
At best, “Red Notice” may act like chewing gum, in that it can have fleeting enjoyable sweet flavors that turn to nothing and most of this is due to Ryan Reynolds. You could, if you must, consider Reynolds to be one of the most obnoxious and punchable men on the planet (don’t agree, but could understand the argument), but he is inarguably funny in the most fleet-footed way and it’s his million-quips-a-minute routine that makes “Red Notice” remotely tolerable and watchable. Reynolds is seemingly preternaturally gifted with the ability to motor-mouth his way through scenes and makes every joke feel as it is unscripted improv rolling off the top of his fleet-footed brain.
Many of the jokes are imbecilic too, but they’ll definitely elicit so-dumb-its-funny guffaws. What they can’t do however is save a boringly dull, soulless, conventional, seen-it-a-million times movie that feels like it was directed and crafted by the different department stores within a one-size-fits-all shopping mall.
Gadot is jaw-droppingly beautiful as usual (sorry, there’s little else to say positive), Johnson plays a good thick-skulled foil to Reynolds and they have decent adversarial charisma together, but “Red Notice” is so generic, “Ocean’s Eleven For Dummies” is about as good as it gets. A mish-mash of far better movies with three handsome actors that are handsomely paid, “Red Notice” has a lot of star power, but the wattage is superficial and far from luminous. Never once does it carry any of the unclassifiable “It factor” charm that sometimes elevates a mediocre movie. Nope, “Red Notice” is just deeply unexceptional and pedestrian: a lot of lights shining on three worldwide-class superstars, with perfect white teeth with explosions and gloss all around them, and never once creating anything that resembles a captivating spark. [D+]
“Red Notice” hits Netflix on November 12.