My Review of "Red Notice"

Red Notice is the latest "blockbuster" Netflix exclusive movies to come out in 2021. It stars three big Hollywood celebrities that it hopes can carry the movie. For the most part these three celebrities, Gal Gadot, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Ryan Reynolds oozes charm to keep this movie from sliding into really murky territory.

The movie starts by explaining what a red notice is. It's basically the highest level of notice for internationally wanted criminals. Here we have a Supercop by the name of John who is on a trail to find the high profile thief named Nolan.

Nolan is after a special egg that the ancient Egyptian Queen Cleopatra once had in her possession. The egg was stolen by Nazi's during the war and somehow got separated. Now there's a huge bounty for these eggs because a billionaire would like to have the eggs for his daughter, who is aptly named Cleopatra. She's getting married and her billionaire father thought it would be poetic to have the three eggs together for her special day.

Things go awry for Nolan because John seems to be hot on every step of his trail. Unfortunately Nolan has another thief that he's competing against by the name of The Bishop. Obviously The Bishop wants to gain possession of the eggs so that she can obtain the ludicrous ransom for the eggs.

This is basically the story. There are a ton of action sequences and chase scenes that follow suit. It's to be expected from a blockbuster action movie. For the most part it works. Each of the actors portraying these three main characters do a superb job giving this movie an added charm to it.

I do have some issues with the movie though. For one, there are a lot of special effects that don't really work. It would have been okay once or twice to forgive a few bad effects but they're littered throughout the movie. You can obviously tell in some of the scenes that the actors are in some staged area or using a green screen. Often times you can tell that they used some sort of computer trickery to meld our real life actors with computer generated scenes. It's oftentimes off-putting. For a blockbuster action movie you'd think they'd work on this the most.

I'm not too sure if it's because I watched this movie in 4k. The again this movie is to appear in theatres and home streaming at the same time. I would only imagine the flaws would look even more glaring on the huge screen. If I can see the problems on a home television imagine what it would look like on the big screen?

There's also something weird with the direction of this movie. This movie tries to pull elements from a whole bunch of different genres. It does some of them well but in some cases I was scratching my head as to what they were doing.

At times I thought they were going to go full Oceans Eleven on the movie where they'd think up of a very cool plan to break in or break out of sticky situations. They do this but in a very simplistic and obvious way. Then the movie would go on these National Treasure/Indiana Jones exploration situation. The direction of this wasn't totally clear.

I think it would have been better off as one or the other. I thought that having to smash so many elements to this movie kind of made the movie a little messy. A little more focus would have helped with the pacing of the movie. They did the two different scenarios quite well I just wished they'd commit to one or the other.

It's still an enjoyable movie but there are a few pacing issues with some a little laziness in the writing. I liked that they were able to use each of the actor's strengths to help boost the fun in this movie. Although, that could be seen as both a pro and a con.

Overall, if you're looking for some popcorn action fun this is a great way to spend your two hours. There's a lot of chuckling jokes along the way too. They kind of set themselves up for a sequel but I honestly don't think they should pursue it. I would have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. It's enjoyable for one viewing but I wouldn't go any further or recommend it to anyone.