The tightly wound and wildly entertaining Netflix holiday thriller “Carry-On” had a budget of about $47 million, which is about a quarter of what the bloated, star-studded and instantly forgettable Netflix mega-movies cost to produce.” Red Notice” and “The Gray Man,” and maybe there’s a lesson here, maybe there isn’t.

I’d take four movies like Carry-On over another Red Notice any day. Give me a taut, clearly written, well-acted, character-packed suspense story about another impressively directed but low-calorie international thriller with superstars quipping and quipping their way through a low-stakes story full of CGI and sweeping drone footage.

I’m not saying “Carry-On” will wow you with its creativity. It’s more of a mix of similar films in the genre:

• The action takes place on Christmas Eve and the airport serves as the main setting for a game of cat and mouse between a man with a badge but limited powers who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and a terrorist who threatens to kill hundreds his demands are not met, it is reminiscent of “Die Hard 2” from 1990.
• The story is peppered with tense and ongoing conversations between earpiece-wearing TSA officer Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) and a perverted mastermind (played by Jason Bateman) on the other end of the line who plays mind games with Ethan and ridicules him for his omissions the courage to make something of himself and threatens to kill Ethan or someone close to him if he doesn’t follow orders. Similar to the setting of the 2002 psychological thriller “Phone Booth.”
• Certain elements (which we won’t reveal) of “Carry-On” reminded me of the 2005 Cillian Murphy-Rachel McAdams film “Red Eye.”

The opening sequence of “Carry-On” even has a bit of a “Lethal Weapon” vibe, with the same Los Angeles setting but Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” on the soundtrack instead of Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” . ” Like “Lethal Weapon,” there is a mysterious and violent episode, and then we cut to a scene of domestic bliss and dawn celebration. Ethan and his girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson), the airport operations manager for the fictional Northwind Airlines at Los Angeles International Airport, have just found out they are having a baby. The happy couple can even travel to work together because they are both on duty on Christmas Eve.

Ethan is inspired by Nora to take initiative and not just throw himself into work. He lobbies his boss, Senior TSO Phil Sarkowski (a perfectly cast Dean Norris), for a promotion, and Sarkowski reluctantly agrees to give Ethan a job “on the machine.” “That means monitoring the X-ray scanner for all hand luggage on the conveyor belt. Ethan has just settled in for the long day when a passenger gives him an earpiece she found in a trash can. Seconds later, Ethan receives text messages from a restricted number asking him to put the device in his right ear – and that brings him into contact with the Traveler (Jason Bateman), who says: “Ethan, today is the day “I’ll remember it for a very long time, but if you handle it right, you’ll have a chance to forget it. One bag, for one life. That’s the deal, that’s what’s going to happen.”

The traveler assigns Ethan a simple task: one of his associates will walk through Ethan’s station in a few moments carrying a suitcase containing something that will be marked by the scanner. All Ethan has to do is… nothing. If he lets the passenger through, no one will be hurt. If he doesn’t, if he tries to contact someone on his phone or signal a colleague in some way, people will die.

This is exactly your film. At first we wonder why Traveler wouldn’t just transport this bag in a vehicle, but TJ Fixman’s script ultimately addresses this issue in a plausible way. As Ethan and the Traveler wage psychological and even physical war, we follow the parallel machinations of Theo Rossi’s “Watcher,” a tech expert and sniper who at one point aims a laser beam at Nora’s forehead, and Danielle Deadwyler’s LA Police Detective Elena Cole, who has the familiar role of the one police officer who believes the threat is real.

As you might expect, some plot developments add credibility as the body count begins to pile up. Nevertheless, director Jaume Collet-Serra (“Black Adam”, “Jungle Cruise”) manages to find the balance between exposition and action sequences well, while the behind-the-scenes machinations of the TSA and Taron seem authentic. Egerton is a likeable normal guy can also run through airports and pull off some ingenious maneuvers against this treacherous traveler. Carry-On is a sharp, smaller thriller with some big, satisfying content.