You’d think that with the investment that makes Red Notice Netflix’s most expensive original movie ever, they would deliver more than a ridiculous, mediocre action movie. And yet, here we are.
With frequent Dwayne Johnson collaborator Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball, Central Intelligence) on writing and directing duties, it’s clear exactly what kind of movie we’re going to get. The opening scene sets the tone perfectly; as we’ve seen a million times before, in a million other heist movies, we get a narrated expositional sequence that sets up the items our main characters will be attempting to steal. This time, it’s the (very fictional) eggs of Cleopatra — priceless artifacts that should be “impossible to steal.” Nevertheless, our morally gray main characters will take the challenge and embark on an unnecessarily complicated journey to do so.
One thing I will say is that, bar the opening sequence, the plot finds its footing very quickly. We’re thrown into a museum chase where FBI profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) is pursuing art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds). Booth is after Cleopatra’s eggs, but so is the Bishop (Gal Gadot), another, more elusive art thief. You can imagine how the rest of the story might play out: friendships are formed, secrets are revealed, long distances are traveled in impossibly short times — the staples of a traditional heist film.
