Ethan Kopek was a typical everyday hero with a few flaws that Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis could have played in the ’80s. He always wanted to be a police officer. Instead, he is responsible for airport security – and not even the absolutely necessary task of searching passengers’ luggage for bombs. For the past three years, this TSA agent has been stuck on a dead end somewhere deep in the bowels of LAX airport, doing who knows what, dreaming of a promotion that will never come.

“Carry-On,” the silly Netflix fun, is set on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest travel times of the year, and Ethan (Taron Egerton) has chosen this moment to prove himself, pleading with his boss (a grumpy Dean Morris). So “Put me on a machine.” His boss is generous and agrees, but this isn’t exactly Ethan’s lucky day. A few minutes after sitting down at the CT scanner, Ethan finds himself in the middle of a cheap Die Hard recreation: someone tries to smuggle a suitcase full of Novichok nerve agent aboard a crowded passenger plane, and they’ve got it Ethan is the weak link that they can manipulate into passing the checkpoint.

Sometimes you see a high-concept Hollywood thriller whose core idea is so fresh and original that you have to marvel at the brain behind it. “Carry-On” is not that movie. On the contrary: TJ Fixman (a writer of the video game series “Ratchet & Clank”, who is writing his first non-“R&C” feature film) and director Jaume Collet-Serra (on familiar ground, after the Liam Neeson thrillers “Unknown” and “Non “Stop”) begin with a premise so banal that you probably imagined it yourself as you walked through airport security: How could a terrorist outsmart this system?

The film’s answer is for evil men (including a ruthless murderer played by an intriguingly cast Jason Bateman) to bully and threaten Ethan into following their orders. The excitement begins the moment he inserts a “lost” earpiece and hears Bateman’s voice giving orders. In theory, it would be much easier to put pressure on one of the many other airport employees who come and go through lower security entrances every day. But the trick here is convincing a dedicated agent to disregard his duty while simultaneously giving the bad guys access to all of LAX’s “Mission: Impossible”-level surveillance cameras.

Since there are more plot holes than this crowded airport has travelers, Fixman’s script only requires us to believe one thing: that Ethan is so devoted to pregnant girlfriend Sofia Carson (Nora Parisi) that he’ll risk his job and the lives of everyone at LAX to prevent it that something will happen to her. Without giving away the surprise, the film eventually reveals that another character is also under the terrorists’ control – and that’s because the villains have taken her husband hostage. Screenwriters like to use this device (like the first time Jack Bauer’s daughter was kidnapped in “24” and he was ordered to assassinate the president) because it weaponizes ordinary people and invites the audience to question themselves : What would you do in your situation? ?

In the case of Carry-On, Ethan is an ordinary guy who is given the opportunity to be a hero And a regular guy blackmailed into endangering everyone at LAX – a tense, internal tug-of-war that plays out in twitching close-ups of Egerton’s strategically clenched jaw (did you ever notice the geometric actor’s face in just such a pose). octagon remembers? Here it’s shot in that overlit, streaming-optimized style where you can practically count every pore. As “Kingsman” proved, Egerton is an attractive action star, for whom this film provides several opportunities to do Tom Cruise-style sprints around the airport.

For Spanish director Collet-Serra, the project serves as a sleek, relatively down-to-earth reboot after the bombast of “Black Adam” while still offering a handful of spectacular set pieces – none more startling than the single-shot “Freeway.” Sequence in which FBI agent Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) fights her way out of a speeding vehicle. Elena and the driver struggle over a weapon as the car crashes into obstacles on either side, all at a speed of 70 miles per hour.

Although Collet-Serra brings creative solutions to each of the action sequences, the project is actually most effective when the audience focuses on the main characters. And since it’s Netflix, there’s nothing stopping you from shouting instructions at the screen as Ethan slowly seems to make the right decision. Early on, Bateman’s character kills one of Ethan’s colleagues, making it clear that there are consequences if he disobeys.

While Bateman is hardly an obvious casting choice, he could well be the film’s MVP, as he brings an unexpectedly sympathetic dimension to the nameless psycho who gives orders into Ethan’s ear – much nicer than the superficially similar control freak Kiefer Sutherland, the he voiced in “Phone Booth.” Bateman plays it firm yet friendly, making us believe he could immediately form a rapport with the man he’s controlling remotely, while Ethan’s strategy is to distract and stall while he tries to identify and ultimately outwit the perpetrator.

If you watch Carry-On on Netflix, you might actually enjoy its absurdity, which leaves a lot of room – in the form of long stretches with no dialogue where Lorne Balfe’s generic score looks at everything as if it were made for TV – and makes sarcastic comments from the family couch. If you’re traveling this Christmas, feel sorry for those TSA agents. And if you’re staying home, make yourself comfortable because Carry-On will keep you ringing.