Red Notice (Netflix-2021) It's fitting that Netflix outbid the major studios for the right this relentlessly generic all star-action-adventure, tongue-in-cheek heist movie.......
'Red Notice' looks like Netflix had already birthed it out of the the same kind of algorithms it creates to figure out which movies you might like based on your previous viewings......
'Red Notice' unfolds like a pre-assembled, Frankenstein'd concoction, a perfect imitation of a junky summer movie you'd normally line up for to kill a hot summer night at the Multiplex.....(if you couldn't think of anything else to see...)..
Budgeted at a typical summer blockbuster 200 mil, it throws three of the premiere stars of CGI-loaded junk (Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot) into a swirling mess of ridiculous action scenes, snarky gags and endless references to the last 150 action romps and buddy comedies you sat through in the last 10 years.......
Johnson's an FBI agent hot on the trail of Reynolds, a master thief of priceless art and museum antiquities. (Do we even need to mention that Reynolds' resourceful rogue also specializes in spewing out non-stop one-liners in the midst of chases and shootouts?_Or could you guess that easily?)
Constantly outsmarting them both is the statuesque, drop-dead gorgeous international criminal known only as 'The Bishop' (Gadot, who, just like Ana de Armas in 'No Time To Die', dazzles as she literally kicks some asses in an evening gown and heels)
Our three not-quite-Amigos go 'Indiana Jones' globe trotting in search of the movie's triple MacGuffins, three golden eggs given to Cleopatra by Mark Antony. (or maybe Richard Burton gifted those eggs to Liz Taylor when they were shooting 'Cleopatra') And naturally this leads the usual 750 CGI digitizers to fashion spectacular action scenes in which gravity is more of a rough guideline than a rule and any amount of catastrophic physical punishment shows little or no effect on our stars....
Johnson, Reynolds and Gadot dutifully troupe through the film playing the same cardboard-cutout characters you've seen them do in all their previous roles. It's a tribute to their tenacity and professionalism that they managed to stay awake in their scenes together.
But having said all that, we'll admit we didn't mind sitting through it at all. 'Red Notice' is so carefully, scientifically put together to resemble a mindless, big budget summertime crowd pleaser, that more often than not, we found ourselves......dare we say it.....entertained.
We'll even go so far as to say we admired and chuckled at one of the film's opening action set-pieces, featuring Reynolds confounding and outwitting a slew of museum guards as they chase him across multiple levels of construction scaffolding. And every so often, one of the Ryan-ator's standard, patented, verbal snark-missiles aimed at Dwayne Johnson really lands......
How much you'll enjoy all this depends entirely on your continued tolerance (or lack of) for connect-the-dots, paint-by-numbers movies deliberately pieced together from random chunks of other movies that scored some big bucks at the box office.....
If you you get a kick out of these three particular actors going through their usual paces in their usual types of movies, then it's a 2 & 1/2 star (**1/2) mild diversion. It's slickly machine-tooled to show you a good time......
Anyone who's getting weary of such films and finds them cynical, tiresome and soulless in their prefab construction.......keep on scrolling through Netflix account to find something else.......
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