Carry-On (2024) - A Guest Review by Chad Dixon

Carry-On is an excellent airport-based thriller that's available to watch on Netflix. Taron Egerton plays a brilliant lead as stuck-in-a-rut LAX junior security team member, Ethan Kopek, who after just finding out that his girlfriend, Nora Parisi (Sofia Carson), who also works at the airport as a Customer Service Manager, is pregnant, decides he's finally going to ask for that promotion from his hard-nosed boss, Phil Sarkowski (Dean Joseph Norris). However, soon after he starts his shift at one of the carry-on baggage check X-Ray machine posts, his day takes a frightening turn.

A random passenger in the queue says she's found a single earbud and just as he is about to place in the nearby lost property drawer, his mobile starts receiving texts from an unknown number. It starts by telling him to place the bud in his ear or his girlfriend with be in danger. He complies and then a calm male voice starts giving him verbal instructions. He is to allow a specific black wheely case with a red ribbon through the system without further scrutiny and that passenger to freely clear through his check point. "What the hell is in that case?"

Now, the main kicker here is that the voice over the earbuds comes from Jason Bateman, who from my memory, rarely plays a baddie, but does it well here as the no-name antagonist. He's convincingly chilling when giving Kopek multiple warnings for unsuccessfully trying to notify his team as to what's going on. An accomplice in a conveniently positioned van in the airport carpark opposite the terminal building is his 'eyes' as they've hacked into the airport's CCTV. They also seem to know what is going on at L.A. Police H.Q. quite easily too, so seem to have all bases covered.

The run time of 2 hours flies by as the tension cranks up deliciously. Seemingly completely trapped in this impossible situation, Kopek has to draw upon every ounce of his wit to try and get out of it, as well as saving his girlfriend. There's a sterlingly good supporting performance from Danielle Deadwyler as L.A. Detective Elena Cole, slowly piecing together what's going down from random incidents cropping up over the city, but mostly the supporting cast were actors I'd not seen before. No doubt with this tense thriller set on Christmas Eve there will definitely be some serious Die Hard comparisons, but I felt that it stands out well enough and is a gripping watch!