After months of dour awards season, there’s something so refreshing about the sophisticated simplicity of the Netflix original “Carry-On.” Remember when Hollywood was a machine churning out single-location action thrillers, often referred to by the shorthand “Die Hard on ____”? They often led to guilty pleasures, but also to really well-made action films like “Air Force One” (on a plane), “Speed” (on a bus) or “Under Siege” (on a ship). I’m not saying Jaume Collet-Serra’s latest is off the mark, but it’s so refreshingly matter-of-fact that it’s reminiscent of an era when Hollywood films were less burdened by mythologies or multiverses. It’s a little too long and way too silly, but most people won’t care. And in a year where there are almost no even remotely good Christmas offerings (sorry to the two Red One fans), this might be the best Christmas movie of the year. (Discuss among yourselves whether or not this provides a further connection to Die Hard.)

In Carry-On, the successful Taron Egerton plays a TSA agent named Ethan Kopek who becomes a key figure in a terrorist attack. After a too long time in which we meet Ethan’s girlfriend Nora (Sofie Carson), who (of course) also works at the airport, and learn that they are about to have a child, we accompany Ethan on one of the biggest traveling days of the year: Christmas Eve . At his job at a crowded security checkpoint, he is handed an earpiece and receives a text message telling him to use it. A stranger (Jason Bateman) instructs him that he will follow instructions or Nora will die. All he has to do is pass a bag through the X-ray machine without raising a red flag. It’s that simple. She’ll survive if he looks away. Even though he knows that means hundreds of others will die.

TJ Fixman’s script is based on such an intelligent concept that it elevates “Carry-On” so much beyond its rough patches. It’s a classic “What would you do?” scenario, actually a variation on the Trolley Problem: Would you do something that would kill your partner, the mother of your child, if it meant saving hundreds of innocent lives? At first Egerton, who can be such a charismatic actor in the right material, felt wrong. Still, he consciously chooses to appear reserved and let the action around him and the more over-the-top performances do the talking. It’s another surely underrated turn in the career of a remarkably enduring artist.

And they talk. In a black coat and hat, Bateman makes a meal of his role as a villain. I’d like to see him in more roles like this, knowing exactly what the job is and executing it menacingly without being overly flashy. Collet-Serra complements the ensemble with excellent character actors including Logan Marshall-Green, Theo Rossi, Dean Norris and a fantastic turn from Danielle Deadwyler as an agent who begins to put all the pieces together. Does it do so in a way that radically challenges logical thinking? Naturally. But we’ve become a culture that’s a little too obsessed with this kind of narrative about gaining social influence. The truth is that almost all of the best action movies throw logic aside a few times to get the job done, and Deadwyler does a really heavy job of holding together some of the more extreme aspects of the film. (No more than one crazy The action scene from “Last Christmas” that made me laugh and gasp in equal measure.)

Collet-Serra has already proven himself capable of this type of straight-ahead action in several of the better Liam Neeson films (“Run All Night,” “The Commuter”) and the highly entertaining “The Shallows.” There, he got sidetracked by franchises for a while with depressing misfires like “Jungle Cruise” and “Black Adam,” but he’s back in his wheelhouse with “Carry-On,” a concept that serves as a testament to his skills Movie like this. It’s not just a bleak awards season that makes “Carry-On” refreshing, but also an action movie marketplace that doesn’t understand how much audiences crave a simple, well-crafted plot. We were all exhausted by the Die Hard rip-offs of the 90s and 2000s. But maybe it’s time to let them get back into the cultural realm.

Now on Netflix.