‘Red Notice’ review: All for the star power of Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot & Ryan Reynolds

Plush locales, high-octane action sequences, elaborate car chases and of course, if-looks-could-kill level of gorgeous people. What’s not to love, right? Wrong! ‘Red Notice’ is one of those—and we say this with a heavy heart—big-budget, star-studded affairs that streaming service Netflix was perhaps counting on to bring in the big moolah. Well, big moolah it shall, critical appreciation it shall not. 

Spread across multiple touristy places, countries and continents (in no specific order)—London, Bali, Egypt, Russia, to name just a few—a flamboyant The Bishop (Gal Gadot) frames the now disgraced FBI profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) as he finds himself on the wrong side of the law. A charming, former world’s-greatest-thief Nolan Booth, however, is hell-bent on helping him clear his name. On the surface, it’s a classic arrangement of ‘convenience’—a recurring theme in the movie—but has any heist ever been simple? There’s the tussle over the title of world’s greatest thief, there’s Cleopatra’s eggs in the narrative, and then there are snitches and goons to combat. 

‘Red Notice’ is your quintessential fast-paced, excitement-evoking heist, but, sadly, without an innovative trail to follow or even the path that leads its audience to an oh-so-very predictable climax. 

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Clearly, director Rawson Marshall Thurber was banking on the collective star power of Johnson, Gadot and Reynolds to ride this one out and emerge victorious. Truth be told, that formula sticks in certain sections of the movie, especially with Reynolds’ humour—after all, it is because of one-liners like “adult virgins have been obsessing over Cleopatra’s eggs” that we love the actor so much. Don’t we? As for Gadot, with that slender frame, never-ending legs and flamboyance that could move even the hardest of them all; she appears to be the poster child of the sex-meets-thrill phenomena. Dwayne Johnson does Dwayne Johnson things in ‘Red Notice’—flexes his sculpted muscles, performs impossibly difficult action scenes, mouths high-sounding dialogues in his deep-set voice and charms his spectators over.

‘Red Notice’ is off to a stupendous start, with plenty of subplots rendered to keep the narrative flowing and its audience, engaged. However, somewhere between expensive parties and beach-side shenanigans, the film loses its initial sheen. The climax—oh, the climax!—could be predicted from a mile away, and, even then, it is depressing for lack of originality. 

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At best, ‘Red Notice’ is a visual homage to the Hollywood stars that adorn its premise. It neither has the swiftness of ‘Baby Driver’ or the crisp, to-the-point direction of Netflix’s own monster hit, ‘Money Heist’. 

Watch the trailer here: