Dog’s Movie House: “Red Notice” Slick But Slight Star Vehicle Featuring Big Time Actors Having A Good Time!

“Red Notice” stars Johnson as FBI profiler John Hartley, an agent who’s after an elite art thief known as The Bishop (Gal Gadot). To catch her, Hartley enlists the aid of Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) an elite thief himself who’s come up on the short end of the stick during several encounters with The Bishop. What follows is an action-packed global adventure as Hartley and Booth try to outsmart The Bishop and attempt to procure the priceless and nearly mythical golden egg of Cleopatra. (There are actually three eggs, but that doesn’t matter a whit.)

Thurber, who also wrote the script, is clearly going for an “National Treasure/Indiana Jones vibe in which he is only partly successful. His primary mistake is that the film is too breezy. It doesn’t quite strike the proper balance between pulpy fun and decent character development. Not to say that “Red Notice” is a bad movie; it’s just that it could have been so much better given the talent involved.

And what talent Thurber has assembled for this film and all of them having a great time. Johnson tamps down his legendary charisma for the most part. He’s the straight man to Reynold’s constantly wisecracking Booth. The two have a nice chemistry that would have benefited from a stronger script. To be fair, Johnson’s buttoned-down performance actually serves the story and he gets to play off the serious image during the third act, but a film like this deserves a more over-the-top performance. Still, it’s nice to see Johnson and Reynold’s trade comedic barbs while dodging bullets and bad guys. The MVP of this film, though, has to be Gadot as The Bishop. She absolutely kills it playing the bad guy. The Bishop is devious, smart, and tough and has absolutely no compunction about it. She loves who she is and Gadot really relishes the opportunity to cut loose and display a fine sense of comedic timing. She’s also a good singer who gets to show off her chops while torturing Johnson with a pair of battery cables.

As shallow as the script can sometimes be, Thurber does a pretty terrific job with the visuals. There is some seriously smooth camera work and some killer fight scenes and car chases. All three actors do a great job with their fight scenes with the initial chase of Reynolds by Johnson and a fight between Johnson, Reynolds, and Gadot being among the highlights. The effects are pretty good for the most part aside from a bullfighting scene that looks like it was shot on a greenscreen from 1992. That scene gets by on some pretty good dialogue between Reynolds and Johnson (“Are you sure you’re not talking about “Jurassic Park?”) so we can give the dodgy CG a pass.

Of course the end sets up a potential sequel and that actually fills me with hope. I’d like to see these characters get together again with a deeper story and more character development. The framework and pieces are in place for a potential action classic. “Red Notice” however, doesn’t quite reach classic status. It’s a perfectly entertaining way to spend a couple of hours with the biggest movie stars in the world, though. 3 1/2 Out Of 5 On Kendog’s Barkometer! So Sayeth The Kendog!

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