Over the holiday break, I was able to catch up on some of the 2024 movies I had somehow missed. Consider it one of the perks of having a decent amount of time off, as well as the silver lining presented by illness forcing me to stay home pretty much the whole time. However, if it wasn’t for this imperfect storm, I wouldn’t be able to say that after watching Netflix’s Carry-On, I have a very New Jersey-style bone to pick with director Jaume Collet-Serra’s latest suspense thriller.
I get that our hero, Ethan Kopek (Taron Edgerton), followed girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) out to LAX, according to the exposition woven by his interactions with The Traveler (Jason Bateman). But when you have someone whose dad was a guard at the Freehold Raceway Mall, and made waves as a track star in New Brunswick, he could have very easily “run away” from those problems by not heading west - but rather north.
That’s right: I think Carry-On should have had Ethan’s TSA agent career set up at Newark Liberty International Airport. With writer T.J. Fixman throwing in so many other references to the Garden State, it kind of felt wrong for Mr. Kopek to make the same betrayals as the Brooklyn Dodgers and Frank Sinatra.
Unless, of course, there’s some secret plan for a potential Carry-On 2 that’s meant to fix this very error. In which case, that's not a bad plan to amp up the action. However, this feels like more of a one-off quest, and as such the original point still stands.
I get that LAX technically gives this flick more room to move around thanks to its wide selection of terminals. However, Carry-On’s claustrophobic nature would have better been suited by using Newark Liberty’s three terminal format. Not to mention, keeping the action near New York could have still seen the ambitious Nora working close to a major metropolitan area.
Admittedly my criticisms aren’t as exacting as those seen through Carry-On being dissected by two off-duty flight attendants. But the thing is, New Jersey’s a pretty big state - big enough that you could run from your Central Jersey problems with a move into North Jersey’s comparatively different environs. Not to mention, a lot of people from Jersey would tell you that moving closer to Newark is its own form of exile; IKEA be damned.
This doesn't even remotely kill my attitude towards this action heater.Carry-On has been pretty flexible when it comes to the comparisons and criticisms it’s taken on. Just ask our own Riley Utley, who saw the Netflix thriller as reminiscent of an entire action sequence from Toy Story 2. And before anyone starts to counter with LAX being a potentially easier filming location, know that this mid-budget adventure was actually filmed in New Orleans.
Even with my own state-inspired quibble now in the hat, I can still very much recommend you watch Carry-On. As we’re still waiting for the 2025 movie schedule to truly kick off, there’s still time for us to do some last minute catch up on the year that came before. If you’re ready to take this flight of fancy, hop onto whatever device you use to access your Netflix subscription, and prepare for takeoff.
