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.

A movie shot in first person sounds like a gimmick. Part of the magic of filmed storytelling is accepting that something can be from someone’s point of view and yet also from a distance. Using the camera as a character’s actual eyes is the domain of university students and niche experimental filmmakers. In a commercial film, it’s to be deployed only in very limited doses.

And yet, with “Nickel Boys,” filmmaker RaMell Ross not only commits to the idea but delivers one of the most powerful films of the year in the process — a lyrical, heartbreaking and haunting journey into the darkness of a brutal reform school in the Jim Crow South.

Ross and co-writer Joslyn Barnes weren’t working from scratch, but Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel about two teenage boys, Elwood and Turner, who become friends while wards of a juvenile reform school in Florida. It’s called the Nickel Academy in the novel and the film, which is fiction, but based on the horrific abuses at the very real Dozier School for Boys, in the Florida panhandle, where boys were beaten, raped and killed. Some of the bodies were shipped back to their homes. Others were buried in unmarked graves that only have recently come to light.

The haunting truth of the broader picture, the all-too-recent displays of inhumanity and racism, looms over every frame. “Nickel Boys” is not exploitation porn, however. In fact, when one brutal beating does happen, Ross directs his gaze elsewhere: A wall, a shoe, a nervous hand, the corner of a bible. The sounds from the other room, the cracking of the whip and the grunts are undeniable. As in “The Zone of Interest,” we don’t need to see it to feel its impact.

This is more of a memory piece than anything else, a reconciling of unspeakable traumas and human resilience through the eyes of two boys. Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is our way in. We see his youth in Tallahassee, growing up with his grandmother Hattie (an especially impactful Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor ) who is as playful as she is protective of this young boy who has only her. He’s smart and attuned to the civil rights movement at large, listening in on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches and impressing his teachers, one of whom recommends him for classes at a technical college. He hitches a ride on his way with a man in a slick suit and car, not knowing that it was stolen. When the man is caught Elwood, the innocent, gets sent to Nickel.

“You’re lucky to be in Nickel,” a younger white employee ( Fred Hechinger ) says to Elwood early on. He’s just received his draft notice and might even really believe it. While he seems like perhaps he’s more friend than jailor, his truest nature will be revealed down the line. Others are more sniveling and obvious, like Hamish Linklater as the school’s administrator who is more than ready to dole out violent punishments with his own hands.

It’s not all Black kids in Nickel, but there’s a segregated hierarchy with the students, one that’s neatly tucked away when inspectors come to the grounds as the employees and administrators scurry to present a good face. Even they knew that their practices are something to be ashamed of.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the first-person camera is its attention to details. It’s not acting like a camera, but a person who doesn’t always see everything “important.” Sometimes it’s one’s own hand, sometimes shoes, tattered shirts, darkness, or a puff of smoke.

And while we’d gotten glimpses of Elwood before, in a camera booth with a girlfriend, the first time we really see him is through Turner (Brandon Wilson) one fateful day in the cafeteria. Turner is laid back and a little world weary, an orphan and a realist counterpart to Elwood’s hopeful idealism. Though opposite in sensibility, these two stick together, finding light and joy even in their hellish surroundings. The camera even starts to shift between them — when they’re looking at one another, they’re also looking through the lens, at us. There are also flashes forward to a man at a computer ( Daveed Diggs ), seen mostly from behind, reading about the discoveries of unmarked graves on the grounds.

The threads do come together, but it requires a bit of patience and giving yourself over to the film, which is both formally and emotionally eye-opening. Adapting great literature can sometimes send filmmakers running towards the conventional; Thank goodness Ross charted his own path instead.

“Nickel Boys,” an Amazon MGM release in limited theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “violent content, some strong language, racial slurs, smoking, racism and thematic material.” Running time: 140 minutes. Four stars out of four.

When one thinks of Marvel Comics, a bunch of superheroes come to mind.  From Captain America to Iron Man and Black Widow to Thor, we think of strong, athletic, supernatural beings who look out for and help the little guy (a.k.a. humans).  However, where there are good guys, there are also bad guys…beings like Thanos, Hera, and The Sinister Six.  One member of the latter group, Kraven the Hunter, gained his animalistic-like powers through an accident and some mystical magic.   Stalking those he hunts, some think he is merely a myth, but Spider-Man would disagree (though some think he is also a myth).  Thanks to Sony Pictures, we now get to learn more about this superhuman when Kraven the Hunter comes to theaters this holiday season.

Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson; Bullet Train/Levi Miller; Pan) is the older son of Nikolai (Russel Crowe; Gladiator), a Russian drug lord who is cruel and heartless, even where his children are concerned. When Nikolai pulls the boys out of school after their mother dies, he takes them on a hunting trip to teach them how to “be men”.

While on safari, Sergei gets attacked by “the beast” – an old and powerful lion.  As he lies dying, a young girl named Calypso (Ariana DeBose; West Side Story) gives him a potion and when it mixes with his and the lion’s blood, Sergei becomes miraculously healed and gains super-strengthened heightened senses.  As he grows older, he becomes a mercenary until the day he needs to use his skills to save his younger brother, Dmitri (Fred Hechinger; Gladiator II/Billy Barratt; Blinded By the Light), from his father’s enemies.

Taylor-Johnson is well cast as Kraven.  Not only does he have the physical characteristics to portray a superhuman, but he also has an intense stare and calm demeanor that is often associated with a predator.  Hechinger comes across as a sniveling baby, similar to the young brother he portrayed in Gladiator II.  Crowe, who has had some wonderful roles in the past, is wasted.  He is more annoying than anything else, but that may partly be due to the script.  DeBose is even more annoying than Crowe and disrupts every scene she is in, but not in a good way.

The script is not well written, with cringe-worthy lines and several plot points all mashed together to try and create something that makes sense.  While it would seem smart to go into deep details of Kraven’s life, much of it is summarized as are the backstories of the other characters.  Even without going into details, the movie is over two hours long and yet offers little in the way of substance.

The production is a mixed bag of well-choreographed action sequences, good stunts, and hit-or-miss CGI.  The stampede is an example of the latter while Kraven’s climbing skills show off the stunt work.  As for the action, if that is the reason you want to see this movie, you won’t be disappointed.

What is most odd about this movie is the way Kraven is portrayed.  In the comics, he is a sort of anti-hero/villain who preys on others, especially Spider-Man. However, in this movie, he comes across as a sympathetic mercenary who only kills those who deserve it (kind of like Dexter).  I’m sure that was a conscious decision by the writers to make him come across as more likable.  Sadly, even with that concession, the film still isn’t great, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone as the release date was pushed back more than once which usually isn’t a good sign.

Grade: C-