Red Notice (4 Stars)

Netflix Thursday #6

This is a film that I watched today, knowing nothing about it in advance. I just saw the names Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds and thought to myself that it couldn't possibly be bad with two such wonderful actors.

The film is about three golden eggs studded with jewels that were given by Mark Antony to Cleopatra as a wedding gift. All three eggs were lost after their death, but two of the eggs were found in 1907. One of the eggs is now on display at a museum in Rome. The other is in the possession of a private collector.

Dwayne Johnson plays John Hartley, an FBI agent visiting Rome after being tipped off that the egg will be stolen. He arrives too late, due to hindrances by Interpol and the museum director. Nolan Booth, a notorious art thief played by Ryan Reynolds, has already replaced the egg with a fake, but he hasn't yet left the building. After a spectacular chase Hartley captures Booth and retrieves the egg, but it's stolen from police custody under his nose.

The tipoff came from another international art thief known as the Bishop. This is actually a woman. What do you call a female bishop? Evidently the word bishop is still used, because the church has no female bishops. The word bishopess (which sounds wrong to me) is used to describe a bishop's wife. The Bishop is the film is played by the Israeli actress Gal Gadot. She's set Hartley up by planting evidence that he was responsible for stealing the egg. Booth and Hartley are imprisoned in the same cell in a high security prison in Russia.

From this point on it becomes a buddy movie. The cop and the crook have to work together, first to escape from prison and then to find the Bishop. Their search takes them from continent to continent. It also involves stealing the other two eggs to reunite all three of them. Didn't I say that the third egg was lost? Yes, but Nolan Booth knows where it's hidden. It was discovered by the Nazis in Egypt, and now it's in a hidden bunker with Nazi loot in Argentina.

The film isn't as funny as I expected. Nolan Booth is a humorous character, constantly joking, but that doesn't make the film itself funny. John Hartley is an all-business straight guy. Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds are a perfect on-screen partnership.

I like the film a lot, but I found the plot twists at the end irritating. Why do screenwriters think that a plot twist is needed in so many films today? I miss the good old films where a plot went from A to B without diversions. So a simple plot makes a film predictable? So what? I like predictable films.

"Red Notice" is a Netflix original film, so it isn't available on disc. With a budget of $200 million, it's the most expensive film ever made by Netflix. Two sequels are planned. I can hardly wait!

I almost forgot to tell you what the film's title means. This screenshot should explain it.