Red Notice – Film Review

When an Interpol-issued Red Notice — the highest level warrant to hunt and capture the world’s most wanted— goes out, the FBI’s top profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) is on the case. His global pursuit finds him smack dab in the middle of a daring heist where he’s forced to partner with the world’s greatest art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) in order to catch the world’s most wanted art thief, “The Bishop” (Gal Gadot).

Rawson Marshall Thunder‘s newest film Red Notice is one of the most 90s feeling movies I’ve ever seen in my life that wasn’t actually released in the 90s. It has that same witty sense of humor, the buddy team-up aspect, highly dangerous adventures, and heists, and so much more. Is this the best movie ever made? Absolutely not. It’s not even in the top twenty-five or thirty of the year, but it’s undeniably fun to watch both Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds spew comedic banter at one another while a villainous Gal Gadot pursues them.

The first thing you absolutely must know about Red Notice before actually going ahead to watch it is this – this movie has zero interest in crafting a legitimately serious and compelling story. It basically just exists as a comedic and action-packed vehicle for its three Hollywood stars. They get some surprisingly good development along the way, but in terms of a story, this movie doesn’t really have one. You could basically just sum it up by saying “Two guys try to steal a highly valuable item. Chaos ensues”.

But I’d be lying if I said that this movie was boring. It’s genuinely a blast to watch and it’s mainly due to the sharply funny script and the electric performances that Johnson and Reynolds deliver. Strangely enough though, they pretty much just play themselves in this movie. Reynolds has more than proven himself capable of being able to play a wide variety of characters whereas Johnson basically just plays… well… Johnson in every movie he’s ever been in.

Here, he’s an extremely macho guy that has a no funny business attitude and is incredibly deadly because of just how strong he is. Johnson’s an incredibly humble guy in real life but why does he have to play the same character in every movie? It’s probably because he’s just such a likable man but, really, come on. When are we ever going to get a movie where Johnson actually has to challenge himself as an actor?

It’s still a blast to see the two stars interact with each other in a handful of scenes that had me smiling from ear to ear. Gadot does a surprisingly entertaining role as the film’s main villain, as well. Everybody obviously knows her best for portraying DC superhero Wonder Woman but she can be quite an amusing villain as shown here. Sadly, she doesn’t get any development whatsoever and basically just exists in this script to be a villain.

However fun and amusing this movie is, though, it does get a bit old by the time the third act comes into play. It’s at that point in the movie where I finally just had to admit to myself that Thunder had no interest in doing anything diverting with his film and instead, he just wanted to make an adventure film with some big movie stars in it. That’s not a huge problem, though. As I said, I had fun with this movie but its tricks wear thin. And they’re making two sequels now, so I guess we’ll just have to see how they turn out. I’m hoping Thunder actually does something unique and interesting instead of formulaic. Only time will tell.