Movie Review – Red Notice – Exciting Con Caper
Table of Contents
My Rating – 3 out of 5
Plot Summary (Storyline)
There’s nothing like a con job movie to spice up a holiday season, and Red Notice lives up to that billing quite well. Released on Netflix on 12th November it has been accepted nicely by the audiences, as the box office collections will testify. The legend of the three priceless eggs rumored to have belonged to Cleopatra has drawn the fervent attention of collectors and thieves alike, for centuries. Two of these eggs are with known collectors, while the whereabouts of the third are unknown, leading to a mad scramble to get it before anyone else. At times, Red Notice feels like a dog chasing its own tail as it goes round and round!
Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) is one of the world’s most notorious and slippery thieves who apparently knows where the third egg is and is now on a mission to capture the first two eggs before going for the third. John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) is a profiler for the FBI and the two clash at the heist of the second egg and before either could claim a victory, the egg is taken away by The Bishop (Gal Gadot) – arguably the best thief in the world! And Interpol is looking into this whole elaborate charade. Now, for the sake of their own reputations, Nolan and Hartley join forces ( or are rather forced to) to take on The Bishop and recover the eggs.
Now, through the max-security prison in Russia to other exotic locales around the world, Nolan and Hartley form a formidable team to take on The Bishop. It is The Bishop who puts them in this high-security prison so that her way to the third egg is cleared while her competition is incarcerated. She makes Nolan give up the location of the third egg but after a while, naturally, Nolan and Hartley escape and chase after The Bishop. It is but obvious that Nolan has misled The Bishop (Gal Gadot) to preserve the secret location of the third egg and purloin it himself.
Hartley, the FBI Special Agent, and profiler is told by Interpol Agent Urvashi Das that he has to exonerate himself by recovering the third egg and so the hunt for the egg begins. Jetsetting through Rome, Bali, Egypt, and Argentina, the three musketeers race after the third egg. The expected twists and turns are all there but they are quite lame and announce themselves from 15 minutes out. The trailer promises much more than the movie actually delivers. A smart production that could have done with a smarter and tauter screenplay!
Conclusion – Movie Review of Red Notice
The cinematography is smart and well done, the camera work fast and lithe but none of it can make up for the weak screenplay which is riddled with holes. Ryan Reynolds is good as ever with his comic timing and snazzy one-liners. Gal Gadot is suave and stunning with the icy-cool exterior of a frozen lemonade but she brings no malice to the role of a scheming con artist. Dwayne Johnson looks rather wooden at times and even a little lost – like he is questioning himself as to what he is doing in the movie! Overall, a fun but empty watch!
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