Red Notice

Red Notice
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Ritu Arya
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber

A little while ago they put out different small films that were written by bots, and they're absolutely hilarious (especially the horror one, but I might be a bit biased). "Red Notice" is on such film, but done on a much larger (a yawn-inducing two hours plus) scale, because everything about the film seems like stuff typed into the bots' algorithm to make the perfect action film, while making it completely devoid of human emotions and...wait...you mean "Red Notice" WASN'T written by bots, and was in fact written by living, breathing humans (or human, who also served as the director as well)? Huh. Maybe this will be the first film written by an android who looks and acts human but at the right time will have lasers coming out of his eyes and bring about the rise of the machines. I wouldn't be surprised by that, much like I wasn't surprised by the many "twists and turns" this supposed film takes, while placing the weight of the entire film in the shoulders of three A-list actors who seemed to wish that they were anywhere else but there (yet again, money talks, so they're in talks to star in TWO sequels to this film).

John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) is a professional FBI criminal profiler who's assigned with Interpol agent Das (Ritu Arya) to protect an egg that once belonged to Cleopatra - one of three, all priceless - after receiving a tip from the mysterious Bishop (Gal Gadot) that it's going to be stolen. Unbeknownst to them at first, the egg was already switched out with a fake by the (second) best art thief in the world, Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds). Hartley apprehends him and retrieves the real egg, but after Booth is taken to jail, Das discovers that someone else stole the egg again, and arrests Hartley because she thinks he did it. While in prison together, Booth and Hartley decide to work together to escape, clear Hartley's name, and stop Sarah Black (Gal Gadot) - who's also the Bishop - from stealing the other two eggs and making her the best art thief in the world. As the mismatched pair embark on their across-the-world adventure, they're hunted down not just by Black, but Interpol as well.

You can essentially forgive me for thinking that this film was written by humanless bots, because the entire enterprise is devoid of human thought. It's incredibly by the books, point-A to point-B and so on, and even the supposed twists, turns, and double crosses are seen a mile away. The dialogue is stinted by what appears to be continual improv, and while you got the likes of Johnson, Reynolds, and Gadot at the helm, those impromptu moments should've dazzled, but instead they fizzled. Even Reynolds - best known for his impromptu talents - seems absolutely tired of it by the time it all ends, much like the rest of us.

The premise of "Red Notice" focuses on the laziest plot device of all: the MacGuffin. Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock coined the term and used it in his 1935 film "The 39 Steps," and he went on to describe what a MacGuffin is:
"It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin'. The first one asks, 'What's a MacGuffin?' 'Well,' the other man says, 'it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers, 'Well then, that's no MacGuffin!' So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all."

For this film, the MacGuffin is the three fabled eggs belonging to Cleopatra (in an odd twist of fate, Gal Gadot is actually planning on playing the famed historical figure in the near future), one of which has never been seen, and of course by the end of the movie it'll be found, because this is a film written by bots (I don't care, I now firmly believe this). So the movie itself focuses on the (mis)adventures to retrieve these eggs, and that's about it. That's the plot. The rest of the runtime is padded by unfunny humorous banter, subpar action sequences, and the proverbial "bumbling" detective role played by Ritu Arya, whose Interpol agent Das is continually two steps behind everyone else, yet has the audacity to think she's the smartest person in the room.

Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds do have decent chemistry together, and it's a shame that their first paired outing was this uninspired mess. You see glimpses of better things ahead, before they travel back down the path of soul-less impromptu banter that becomes tiring after the first half hour. Gal Gadot doesn't fare much better, but she at least has some personality, whereas Reynolds seems like he doesn't care to be there at all, and Johnson is so bland he becomes wallpaper on the background. There's nothing more to be said about this movie except...yawn.

Squashing the talents of three A-list actors and supplying a script (I believe) were written by bots, "Red Notice" is filled with every action cliche in the book while offering absolutely nothing new, exciting, fresh, or at all memorable.

The Score: C-