On Dec. 13, 2024, Netflix announced the release of a new Netflix film titled “Carry-On.” The film is a fictional story about how a young TSA agent gets blackmailed by a mysterious traveler on Christmas Eve into letting a dangerous suitcase onto an airplane.
With a runtime of exactly two hours, this thriller film is packed full of intense fight scenes, seemingly inescapable situations, and a sense of despair for the main character that will leave you at the edge of your seat, anxiously awaiting what happens next.
Spoilers to the film will be below, continue at your discretion.
The film follows Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton), his mediocre life and dead-end job, and his girlfriend Nora Parisi’s recent pregnancy (Sofia Carson). In the beginning scenes, he argues with her about his career path. She tries to talk him into applying for the police academy and following his strayed dream of becoming a police officer, but he is hesitant. It is later revealed that Kopek was reluctant because he had previously failed the academy because of a failed polygraph test.
Kopek arrives at the airport, assigned to the lowest TSA job: waving the metal detector wand. He convinces his supervisor, Phil Sarkowski (Dean Norris), to let him operate the X-ray machine, claiming he wants to climb the ladder for his soon-to-be child. While scanning luggage, a woman points out an earbud left in a tray that isn’t hers. Kopek almost puts it in lost and found but gets a text from an unknown number instructing him to put it in. On the other end is the traveler (Jason Bateman), who gives Kopek one job: let a bag with a red ribbon pass through without flagging it, or his girlfriend, Parisi, dies.
Kopek tries to outsmart the traveler numerous times, but the traveler’s accomplice notifies the traveler of Kopek’s every move using the security cameras they had tapped and catches him every time. Kopek listens to noises on the other side of the earbud and uses them to triangulate where the traveler is sitting in the airport. After the third time Kopek tries to alert the police of this seemingly dangerous request utilizing the traveler’s description, the traveler kills the coworker that Kopek tries to alert using Aconitine, a poisonous chemical that can induce a heart attack and is undetectable in most autopsies.
He begins to finally take the traveler seriously, and he sits down and has a discrete talk with the traveler in person. The traveler says he is not a cartoon villain, just an ordinary man with a job to do, just like Kopek. He tells Kopek to calm down and go back to the X-ray machine. This is when their guy enters the line with the suitcase with the red ribbon. He puts it through the machine; Kopek is utterly shocked by what he sees. It is an incomprehensible bioweapon that he has never seen anything similar to. Kopek is visibly unsettled but lets the suitcase and the man through.
Kopek goes to the bathroom, locking it with a maintenance sign as he violently heaves into a toilet. The traveler enters, and they fight until Kopek gains control of the traveler’s plastic gun, designed to bypass metal detectors but prone to melting, which is important later. Kopek orders the traveler to surrender, but he remotely activates the Novichok, threatening to gas nearly 10,000 people unless Kopek disarms it under his guidance. The bag, flagged for random inspection after Kopek secretly altered the list, is in an inspection room. Kopek disarms it, but Mateo Flores (Tonatiuh Elizarraraz) takes the plastic gun and shoots Kopek’s supervisor, Sarkowski.
Kopek figures out that Flores is not a bad guy, but rather a man dragged into the situation just like him at the threat of a loved one, Flores’ husband. Shortly thereafter, the traveler discretely orders Flores to kill Kopek with the plastic gun, or his watcher (Theo Rossi) will kill his husband. Kopek and Flores go on a huge chase and fight in the back of the airport where conveyor belts handle bags and distribute them. Flores keeps rapid firing at Kopek and he attempts to tell him that the gun will overheat, but right after, the plastic melts; the makeshift firearm explodes, sending pieces lodging into Flores’ throat and killing him. Kopek outsmarts the traveler by secretly switching the Novichok inside to an identical bag of a larger size and a different tracking sticker.
The traveler orders the watcher to kill Parisi for Kopek’s uncooperativeness, but before Kopek can get to her, he gets caught by Detective Cole and arrested. As Cole goes to shut down the airport, Kopek breaks free and goes to save Parisi, who is being chased around a parking garage by the watcher. Just when it seems like Parisi is about to be killed, Flores’ husband, Jesse (Adam Stephenson), who is tied up in the watcher’s trunk breaks free and kills the watcher with his sniper rifle, saving Kopek and Parisi.
This leads to the traveler taking the luggage onto the plane to Washington, D.C., himself since Flores is dead. His luggage is scanned, notifying Kopek, and then he boards. The suitcase doesn’t fit in the overhead, so it’s placed in cargo. As the plane prepares for takeoff, the traveler plans to activate the Novichok. Parisi convinces Detective Cole to let the flight take off, as Kopek is the only one who can disarm it, and grounding the flight would tip off the traveler, leading to detonation. Kopek runs onto the runway, enters the plane from below, and disarms the suitcase. All seems fine until the traveler tries to activate it remotely, but it fails. Seeing Kopek on the cargo cameras, he goes down to kill him. This ends with Kopek shoving the traveler into a vacuum-sealed fridge and throwing a Novichok canister inside. The traveler presumably dies a painful death, coughing up blood and smearing it on the window.
The whole reason behind the traveler’s near terrorist attack, a Congresswoman is on the flight to Washington D.C. and has been trying to get a bill through Congress that would push unreal amounts of funding toward private contractors for defense. Her bill did not have enough support, but if she and an entire plane had been targeted and killed by what looks like a Russian terrorist attack, Congress would have unanimously voted the bill in, leading to a firehouse of funding for private contractors like the traveler.
This movie is breathtaking, with many standout scenes. One of the most notable is when Detective Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) realizes Agent Alcot (Logan Marshall-Green) is an impersonator after a call from Detective Herschel (Josh Brenner). She confronts him at gunpoint, and he reveals their agency has been tapped for three days. A highway fight ensues, ending with a semi-truck T-boning their car, flipping it upside down. The impersonator strangles Cole until she grabs a gun from the ceiling and shoots him point-blank. A graphic, unnerving scene, intense without blood, beautifully shot with impossible camera angles, all set to Wham!’s Last Christmas.
The entertainment industry has begun to stray from its origins of producing original films and TV shows, leaning towards unnecessary sequels and multiverses. Carry-On has broken free from this new standard of churning out Hollywood slop and found itself following the roots of film, something so refreshing and out of the ordinary to see in this day and age. Several people are asking if there will be a sequel to this film. I hope they do not ruin this film by trying to continue its plotline where its continuance is deeply unneeded.
At the time of writing this, Carry-On sits in fifth place for the most-watched movies of all time on Netflix, with almost 150 million total views. As for my opinion, this is my movie of the year and I highly suggest it to anyone with a Netflix subscription who has not seen it yet.