Red Notice Review: Sloppy Genre Trip

A still from Red Notice

Red Notice
Dir: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Ritu Arya
Rating 2/5

Red Notice is a product of the disposable era. It is imminently forgettable. It garners notice only because of its high profile highly paid star cast, the rest of it is just lackluster humdrum genre mechanics involving heists, chases, sloppy buddy comedy shtick, passable entertaining banter, turning the tables, etc.

Thurber, the director of "Skyscraper" hopes his frayed narrative could give the audience something to cheer about merely by putting together a heavyweight star cast that includes Ryan Reynolds as ace criminal and adept escape artist Nolan Booth and Gal Gadot playing mysterious jewel thief, The Bishop in a catch me if you can set up with Dwayne Johnson as the primary pursuer, FBI's top profiler John Hartley and Ritu Arya as Interpol Inspector Das, giving hot chase.

This film opens with a sequence in a museum where you see Booth trying to pull a fast one on Hartley and Das. It's an engaging flippant opener but thereafter the film goes downhill. We are informed about Cleopatra's three coveted Golden eggs of which only two have been discovered. One was in the museum before Booth got hold of it, the other is in the hidden closely guarded collection of a middle-eastern arms dealer and the third is yet to be found…but Booth has an idea where it could possibly be. Huh?

The action is unimaginative and the comedy fails to mine the laughs. The writing fails in the due diligence test, the CGI looks third rate, continuity is terrible, and the director probably never had an original idea to lend to the making of it. Dwayne Johnson looks lost, Ryan Reynolds' so-called witty shtick seems passé and Gal Gadot seems to have been pushed back to earth in a hurry. Avoidable Really!