Carry-On: A Christmas Thriller

Be certain that this is not the long awaited documentary by Robert Zemeckis about Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, although the title of this film might put you in mind of that supergroup.

Instead, Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman play an excellent cat and mouse game, as the power dynamics ebb and flow.

By cleverly playing on an experience everyone has had, the agony of clearing security at the airport and getting boarded in timely fashion, the film builds on the familiar while also apparently giving you a glimpse behind the scenes. The plot is definitely intriguing, with several different layers and a few decent twists; kudos to screenwriter T.J. Fixman.

Many viewers will wonder how the film makers were seemingly able to film all over LAX. There is a great roller coaster ride through the baggage claim sorting area and one of the better car chase sequences, this time only involving one car.

Despite a few continuity problems in the early scenes (with lipstick on and off, and the sun rising a bit too quickly after arriving on the job before dark) the film quickly settles in as director Jaume Collet-Serra tightens the screws.

An extremely clever plot point is established early, providing Bateman’s voiceover with a speaker in Egerton’s ear. Bateman is calm, cool and collected as the bad guy; we have seen him pressed into similar service in “Ozark.” His range as an actor is indeed impressive. Our hero is the similarly versatile Egerton, who acquits himself well, including some impressive action sequences where other actors would have tapped in their stunt double. Indeed, this role as an intrepid TSA agent is almost diametrically opposed to when we saw Egerton playing Elton John in “Rocketman.”

An amazing handful of high profile classic Christmas songs are sprinkled judiciously through the film.

In future years we will see whether “Carry-On” continues to fall into the same narrow category of 1990’s “Die Hard 2” as the seeming oxymoron of repeatable Christmas thrillers.