THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
A lot of heist films come and go, but it never takes away how there is always a way for each one to be entertaining however. In recent times, an ideal example is Red Notice.
PLOT
The film follows FBI agent John Hartley tracking down international art thief Nolan Booth who’s on the path of capturing three golden eggs that once belonged to Egyptian queen Cleopatra. He stops him from stealing one in Rome, accompanying Interpol Urvashi Dias, but it quickly gets stolen by another thief, Sarah Black/The Bishop, who frames the protagonist to cover her tracks. Ironically, Hartley would be placed in the same Russian prison as Booth. Once he realized who was ahead of them, they agree to be partners to retrieve the eggs before the Bishop for their own goals: Hartley will get them to be cleared for the accusation while Booth will become the number one art thief in the world. When they escape together, they try to steal the second egg in Valencia, in the possession of arms dealer Sotto Vocce (Chris Diamantopoulus). That would backfire due to The Bishop being her partner. She would end up torturing them both until Booth would give her a false location for the third egg to be in Egypt. When they escape from Vocce’s hands, Booth would confess to Hartley the third egg is actually in Argentina and is sure of this due to his father being obsessive of the eggs in his lifetime. He owned a watch that belonged to Adolf Hitler’s personal art curator Rudolf Zeich, that contained coordinates of where the egg is. With it, it takes them to a secret bunker where the egg is surrounded by Nazi artifacts. They almost take it for themselves until Black arrives to take it for herself, having caught on to Booth’s lie. All get interrupted by Das who’s tracking them down since the Russian prison break. All three central characters would escape the bunker via antique Mercedes Benz 770 ‘31. Once away from authorities, Hartley would confess he’s not an agent, but instead is a conman and shares the alias of The Bishop with Black who is in fact his lover the whole time. They had been using Booth since Rome to get to the third egg and leave him handcuffed once they get what they want. 6 months after they give the eggs to an Egyptian billionaire and have him framed for the heist, The Bishop would run into Booth again who informs them he told Das of their Cayman Islands account worth $300 million of the eggs’s payout. With the agent still searching for them, he offers to make amends by splitting even for another heist which they agree to. The film would end with them at the midst of starting a new heist targeting the Louvre while Das officially places the trio on red notice, the highest level of arrest warrant issued by Interpol today. THOUGHTS
2021 was a big year for Netflix when releasing new films weekly, showing exactly how dominant it has become in the entertainment industry. They even went the extra mile in producing this with an expensive budget of $200 million, their highest as of writing this. While I don’t call this film amazing, I don’t find it terrible either because I was generally impressed of what was done. The action/chase scenes were well edited, as well as solid production and visual effects to bring realistic landscapes to the screen. My favorite of the bunch had to be the prison because you knew things were gonna ante up from there. Even the score Steve Jablonsky gave enough excitement to the scenery from play by play. This film works overall because with impressive writing and directing by Rawson Marshall Thurber, it nails the aspect on what makes heist films special in their own right: It’s not about whodunnit, but how they done it instead and this was a clever take on it. You know something is cooking in front of us and we had to see it unfold in what I think was a smart fashion. The whole time, I would’ve not guessed the way the story was going and that is where I respect it for leaving me surprised for the most part. In this particular setting, you get a sense this is a story of how people have their own set of talents and can/will use it for the right or wrong reasons. This is a case where they’ll do it for the wrong when exploring three characters who do just that, who are well played by three talented actors. While there is no origin on why Sarah Black has been a thief for however long, Gal Gadot has you get the sense she enjoys the thrill of it through her performance. She is so good at what she does because she has her gift of persuasion as an act of manipulation, which has helped her longer than others would expect. With such a skill, you would think she’d be a lone wolf in the life she chose. That just comes to show you can find your life partner in the most unexpected places. Dwayne Johnson definitely fooled us into thinking Hartley was a humble man who had a clear focus on bringing justice, but was instead acting just as deceptive as his true partner yet still does not lie of his nobility. What he does differently is tell people half the truth when people are guaranteed to ignore it, which is exactly what happens. He tells Booth straight up he is the bad guy when they first met and he was honest on how his dad was a conman. What he never shares is the goal to top his legacy. And he becomes a good match with Black because even he enjoys the thrill of it all. While it is dangerous to get too close to people, it always worked for him because he never let outsiders know his true intentions until it’s too late. To him, it didn’t mean to not connect with those who are in the same field as him, which is what he did with Booth. From start to finish, Ryan Reynolds has me rooting for Booth the most because he does a great job in embracing confidence when being snarky, which is a delight for us than it is for everyone around him. I mean I’m always gonna laugh at him pointing out Hartley didn’t need to wear a hairnet when he’s bald, or whistling the Indiana Jones theme. Booth is different from the Bishop couple he’s a thief that does it out of personal interest. When his dad mistook him to have stolen Zeich’s watch, it triggered him to live a life he didn’t have to live. Hartley saw his heart of gold when they were together and knew off of that he wouldn’t double cross him, becoming his perfect ploy for the bigger picture. Of course, Booth was too smart to cut ties with him so fast. He got even with tipping off Das but still chose to align with the Bishop because he’s now in a position where he can enjoy what he does which I can’t help admiring. But with a determined agent like Das, well played by Ritu Arya, who appears to be fully in on the right side of the law, you know the cat and mouse chase has potential to be more entertaining in inevitable sequels. However it’s done, I’ll be here for it to give it a chance. I’ve given enough due credit, but it doesn’t the things I picked up that didn’t make sense storywise. For instance, why would Das and Hartley wait until getting out of the car to acknowledge he ain’t a cop? It’s too weird for them to likely be in silence a whole drive and not bring it up at all until after. It’s one of the weirdest hints if you ask me. And why does he do a double take on when Black steals the first egg? It is one thing to keep us off guard but there be a clarification on if he did it to ensure she did. Also, why would there ever be a recording app connected to a profile photo? It’s not like Black is friends with Booth, so there’s no reason for her to have that unless there was another Nolan Booth she knew. And how did Booth even steal the soap from the prison showers? It doesn’t make sense for him to pull this off when there’s always someone showering every day who would’ve seen him and he couldn’t have done this at night. And I gotta say it now before I get but guards gotta stop leaving out their keys out in the open. I know this is the best case for the story to continue, but guards need to be smarter than this to prevent future escapes. If we’re gonna talk about continuity errors, I’m gonna mention how it didn’t look Booth had a strong enough snowball to throw at the guard at the chopper because he sweeps the snow but doesn’t ball it up. Getting deeper, why does the therapist’s silent alarm planted on the opposite desk when it should be placed right in the original side the therapist would be. That’s a big design flaw because a patient could step on it on accident. I also don’t believe Hartley got Sotto’s phone when we didn’t his arm do the pick pocketing. If we saw Booth do it at the prison, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see how it worked for someone else. What was so unrealistic compared to the deepfake tech used to get the second egg was how Booth still being able to take Hartley to the washroom when he’s posing as a server and bumped into him? Someone else should’ve been instructed to take him and that would’ve raised more suspense. I know it can be cool for a protagonist to take a big bump and brush it off moments later, but for seeing many bull fighting shows I know damn well Hartley should have been knocked the fuck out after that bull him. The Rock needs to stop making his characters invincible because only in Black Adam was that excusable. It is a cool escape when the unexpected trip use the Mercedes, but there is no way the battery would work after being left for 75 years. Even if the tires were still in good condition, I don’t think the gasoline would be valuable either. Ignore this, then you’ll have as much fun as I did. In short, Red Notice gets the job done in being an overall entertaining heist film whether or not you see where it’s heading. If you have Netflix and enjoy these kind of films, check this out when you have the time.
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