Three of the biggest movie stars in the world converge for one big action-adventure spectacular, enlivened by sound like some project from the late 1990s, before IP became the selling point and actors more incidental.
The experiment of Rawson Marshall Thurber’s film is to see if their respective styles can meld together into something that may kick off yet another franchise.
Alas, Red Notice is limp and dull, and does more to showcase the shortcomings of each of its marquee idols than it does to highlight their bankable charisma.
These objects don’t have any magical, Ark of the Covenant-esque properties, but the Indiana Jones movies are nonetheless referenced in Red Notice, both in a Nazi-loot plotline and by Reynolds whistling a bit of John Williams’s theme music.
It’s fitting that Reynolds should be the one to do the referencing—as his character nods to lots of other old things, like Pulp Fiction and the way Borat says “nice.” These irksome little non-jokes aptly represent Reynolds’s grating performance, a schtick that’s seriously diminished in charm since Reynolds first trotted it out over 20 years ago.
Johnson, once again playing the swaggering but gentle hulk, fares a bit better, because he is generally a more winsome performer.
Gadot mostly just has to slink and sass and be smarter than the boys, doing a more wicked, but empty, riff on Diana Prince’s cool proficiency.
The film’s grim insistence that we are witnessing some seismic movie star coming-together makes one fret, a little, about the future of film iconography.
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