Red Notice (2021)

 

Two thousand years ago, Roman general Mark Antony gifts Egyptian queen Cleopatra three bejeweled eggs as a wedding gift symbolizing his devotion.

Over the centuries the eggs become something of a talismanic prestige item for both wealthy collectors and the thieves who like to rob them.  The most notorious examples of the latter are a shadowy, possibly fictional figure known as The Bishop, and the irreverent, wise-cracking Nolan Booth.

Booth makes a play for the first of the eggs, but his ingenious scheme is interrupted by FBI Special Agent John Hartley.  Despite Booth's best efforts, Hartley manages to capture him and recover the egg - but the item then vanishes from custody. So when Hartley's credentials suddenly fail to check out, both men find themselves sent to a Siberian prison.

It seems The Bishop is definitely not fictional, after all; and it is she who has engineered this whole situation.  The two men will have to put aside their differences if they want to break out of prison, recover the egg, and turn the tables on her.

Of course, that will be easier said than done, with plenty of mad cap action and 'surprises' along the way.

You'll notice I put 'surprises' in quotes, and there's a very simple reason for that: I don't think that anything that happens in Red Notice will actually come as a surprise to any remotely savvy audience member.  It's a very by-the-numbers film in terms of both plot and characters.

As you can see from the image above, those characters are played by three talented actors.  Alas, the film doesn't give them anything but the most basic version of their most familiar archetypes.  Dwayne Johnson is big and stoic; Ryan Reynolds is quippy and sarcastic, Gal Gadot is sultry and dangerous.  These are roles they could all perform in their sleep.

This is very much undemanding, unambitious, "comfort food" film-making.  You'll probably be tolerably entertained for most of the run time, but it's definitely all very much a grab bag of familiar tricks and tropes cobbled together in an undemanding formula.