Red Notice | Film Review

 

This is a Netflix original that came out recently. The premise seemed quite generic, but I was mainly interested in the cast. In fact, the cast was definitely the most important thing in the promotion of the film.

An FBI Profiler (Dwayne Johnson) and an art thief (Ryan Reynolds) work together to catch an evasive criminal mastermind (Gal Gadot).

I started off disliking this film, and while there were enjoyable moments in the middle and end, overall it just wasn't that great.

For a start, the beginning feels like it was written to be really exciting, but I actually lost interest really quickly (about 8 minutes in). In fact, I was never made to care about the characters.

The beginning of the film is also really sporadic. There are 4 location changes and time jumps in the first 22 minutes and it's almost exhausting to watch.

There are moments when the comedy slips into parody. There was never a time when I truly believed these characters or their situation.

The film rests on the chemistry between these characters - particularly Johnson's character, Hartley, and Reynolds' character, Booth. And while their chemistry was okay (it didn't feel like this was their first film together), there wasn't enough time or energy was put into making the audience believe their friendship.

Speaking of Reynolds' character, Booth felt like an extension of so many characters that Reynolds' plays in various movies. On the one hand, as a fan of his movies, it is nice that the character instantly feels familiar. But when most of the character's lines are jokes, it becomes a bit tedious. 

Gadot's character, The Bishop, is fine, but she doesn't have chemistry with either of her co-stars, and it felt like the film could have been made without the character entirely.

The story itself is really generic. The only thing original about it was the actors playing the characters, and this is what the marketing relies on. I don't think the film would have been made at all had these actors not been attached.

There were a couple of twists that made the plot more interesting than it would have been otherwise, but they didn't really change the film that much.

Overall, this film wasn't the buddy comedy that it tried to be. It ended better than it started, but that's not saying a lot.

4/10