Like any teenager on a Friday night, I found myself tearing it up by flipping through streaming services with my mom to find a new movie to watch. We got to Netflix and saw the new movie Carry On. We had both watched the trailer and decided that it would be a solid choice.
As a Die Hard franchise lover, I figured that this movie would quickly become a new favorite with its similar action packed Christmas time theme. However, the movie fell short and was just too stressful of a watch to be able to enjoy the actual plot. I wouldn’t say that it was anything special, but it definitely wasn’t bad.
The plot of the movie starts out with Ethan (Taron Egerton), a TSA worker, finding an earpiece and receiving a text telling him to put it in. He is told by a man (Jason Bateman) that there is a bag that he needs to make sure gets through security without any hiccups, or his pregnant girlfriend and coworker’s family die.
Now this threat didn’t really come as a shock to me because it is pretty common, in the large number of action movies I’ve seen, that there is some sort of collateral damage to make sure the person complies with the request. However, this time I felt oddly connected to the characters and would be devastated to see his girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson), die.
As the bag was going through security, I found myself super anxious and unable to watch. Ethan is able to see what kind of weapon it is, and discovers that it is going to kill a whole lot more than just one person. This definitely increased the level of urgency and only raised my anxiety.
During all of this at the LAX Airport, there is a storyline of detectives investigating a rather confusing murder that occurs in the opening scene. Eventually, this investigation overlaps with Ethan’s situation and only elevates the action more.
By this point, one would think that this movie is going to quickly come to a close, but boy is that not the case. There are still many more fist fights and deaths to sit through. Although the movie is about 2 hours, when my mom and I got to this point, I was no longer engaged and wanted the movie to end.
Ethan eventually attempts to stop the weapon, the result I will not be revealing. That scene is definitely what I enjoy. It is a little stressful, but not so stressful that I have to cover myself with a blanket so that I don’t have to watch. The movie comes to a close, and all’s right with the world.
Overall, I did like the movie but I felt that it dragged on at some points and was way too stressful to keep me engaged. I thought the acting was good, and while I can’t see Jason Bateman as anything other than Nick Wilde from Zootopia, I still enjoyed.
