‘Carry-On’ Review: Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman Face Off in Netflix’s Satisfyingly Tense Airport Thriller

When the manager of the transportation security officers at LAX greets his bleary-eyed employees with a chipper “good morning” at the beginning of Carry-On, Jaume Collet-Serra’s low-key gripping thriller, his voice drips with sarcasm.

It is Christmas Eve at the bustling airport, which means it is decidedly not a good morning. The stakes are high for the hundreds of agents responsible for shepherding anxious and impatient travelers through security checkpoints. The bag scans, the body searches and the changing instructions around shoes and laptops are triggering for a citizenry worn down by the post-9/11 security apparatus. So truthfully, it’s a bad morning — and, at least for Ethan Kopek (an excellent Taron Egerton), it’s about to get worse. 

Carry-On, which premieres on Netflix this Friday, Dec. 13, follows the slacker TSA agent through what might be his most challenging day on the job. It begins on fairly normal grounds, with Ethan and his girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) reveling in the news of an unexpected but welcomed pregnancy. The prospect of a child activates Ethan’s anxiety about adulthood (“I thought I would be further along before this happened,” he says) and prompts Nora’s encouraging speech about following dreams. She just got promoted to a managerial position at the airport and urges Ethan to reconsider taking the police academy exam so he can fulfill that classic American dream of becoming a cop. 

But Ethan, still scarred by his first failure to get in, wants to focus on making more money. That day at work, he asks his boss for a promotion, or a chance to prove himself. Phil (Dean Norris), with some convincing from Ethan’s buddy Jason (Sinqua Walls), puts Ethan on bag scans.

Unbeknownst to Ethan and his fellow security agents, a shadowy figure needs a dangerous package to get through LAX checkpoints. This mysterious man (Jason Bateman) and his associates (one played by Theo Rossi) planned for Jason to be in that seat. When they realize Ethan is their new pawn, the crew deftly adjusts to blackmail him instead. 

Working from an assured screenplay by T.J. Fixman (Ratchet & Clank), Collet-Serra (Black Adam, The Shallows) crafts a satisfying surveillance thriller reminiscent of Eagle Eye (2008) and Phone Booth (2002). Like Shia LaBeouf’s Jerry, Michelle Monaghan’s Rachel and Colin Farrell’s Stuart, Egerton’s Ethan finds himself under the control of an anonymous extortioner. (The instructions come to Ethan through a tiny earpiece dropped off by a random traveler.) And similar to these other films, Carry-On builds its suspense on the frightening reality of the state’s expanded surveillance power and the erosion of individual privacy in the name of national security. It might not spawn any advanced theories about these latter themes, but it does serve as a reminder of this omnipresent system’s relative novelty. 

Carry-On revs up fairly quickly, leaving the stilted intimacy of Ethan’s personal life for the bustling drama of LAX. The film’s early tone resembles a workplace comedy, complete with the beleaguered manager, try-hard colleague (Joe Williamson) and personality hire with several side gigs (Gil Perez-Abraham). The actors who make up this gallery of side characters offer brief but wonderful turns, adding humorous touches to a high-stakes story.

Collet-Serra and DP Lyle Vincent (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Bad Education) stage some pretty memorable scenes of TSA agents at work, including one in which Jason tries to soothe a frustrated crowd and help travelers fed up with a system of random checks make their flights. These scenes humanize the agents who don’t want to enforce these rules any more than passengers want to comply. 

While his colleagues try to make the best of a nightmare travel day, Ethan, fresh off the threats on Nora’s life, is on edge. The mysterious traveler (who remains unnamed throughout the film) has given him the nonnegotiable terms and conditions of this arrangement: If Ethan doesn’t let the bag through, Nora will die. Ethan refuses to accept this anonymous bullying, and this desire sets off the principal action of Carry-On. 

A gripping game of cat and mouse begins as Ethan tries to outwit the traveler and his cohort cohort. Egerton and Bateman’s performances elevate Carry-On and contribute significantly to the film’s overall success. Even when the repeated showdowns between the TSA agent and traveler lose potency, these actors maintain the narrative’s tension and viewer investment. As their rivalry slowly becomes one of two equals, wondering how each might outmaneuver the other becomes part of the thrill. Bateman is excellent as a villain, and Egerton finds his groove as a working class American trying not to get fired. The Rocketman star goes beyond the surface of his character’s layabout persona to find the attributes that transform him into a hero.

Running parallel to the confrontation between Ethan and the traveler is an underbaked plot about the local police’s investigation into an incident that might be related. But the external factors that set off the heightened airport chamber drama are less evolved and these scenes, which include an underused Danielle Deadwyler, are some of the weakest in Carry-On.

The Piano Lesson actress plays Elena Cole, a police officer with a hunch about a mysterious fire that opens the film. From minor clues, she figures out a dangerous plot is afoot. But the plausibility of this subplot is cursed by a clunkiness that recalls the more unbelievable moments of F. Gary Gray’s Heist. Ultimately, this thread introduces more questions than Carry-On can realistically acknowledge or even answer — serving as a reminder that in film, as with travel, it pays to pack light.