Red Notice

Sometimes Is Good, Sometimes Is Bad

I love a good heist, whodunnit, kind of movie. Things like Knives Out, The Sting, Murder on the Orient Express— and the fact that “Red Notice” attempted to do just that makes me applaud the effort and the talent and time that went into this here movie, but overall? I, unfortunately, did not like it.

You can tell this movie was fun to make. A jam-packed cast with funny quirks and quips and enjoyable one-liners that lacks any nuance to what could’ve been exemplary complex characters. Instead, each actor unapologetically plays themselves.

Gal Gadot is calm and collected.

Wonder Woman doing a badass kick in some badass clothes.

Dwayne Johnson is cool and charming.

Dwayne Johnson being cool and charming staring at an exact replica of his head.

And Ryan Reynolds is…Ryan Reynolds.

Ryan Reynolds in a school boy’s uniform about to drop some sick dance moves.

Silly, irreverent, and sarcastic. Deadpool without the mask which has become a staple of his most recent acting repertoire because snarky one-liners and fourth-wall breaking jokes are the new “in” in Hollywood (which I love of course, but with a heavy dash of salt and self-awareness to elevate the comedy, not saturate it to the style of McDonald’s Quarter Pounders).

This movie pays great homage to caper-esque films and is fun in the plot twists and the duplicitous characters.

The foreshadowing feels heavy-handed or nonexistent at times and the big reveal was legitimately shocking and not in the “Wow-I-should’ve-seen-that-coming-I’m-a-goddamn-idiot” kind of way but more like a “Where-the-fuck-did-this-train-come-from-oh-no-my-leg” kind of way.

In general, a good movie to play in the background but maybe not watch more than once because I can assure you: every time you look up you will see something random and nonsensical but overall emotionally unimportant.