Red Notice (2021)

Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. Starring Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Ritu Arya, Chris Diamantopoulos. [PG-13]

After being framed for stealing a valuable jeweled artifact by notorious thief The Bishop (Gadot), Johnson’s FBI-agent-on-the-run teams up with The Bishop’s chief competition (wisecracking art thief Reynolds) to clear his name and recover the stolen goods. Glossy, mindless escapism moves at a steady clip, but boggles the mind with the sheer volume of logic lapses and coincidences, and too often reeks of forced banter and bonding (at times, Reynolds seems incapable of speaking dialogue that isn’t a smug and/or desperate quip). The stakes couldn’t feel lower no matter how many times the geography changes, and for a movie that spends so much time circling the globe, the filmmakers certainly short change the viewer when it comes to seeing that geography; almost every new location is generic enough to essentially be anywhere (most likely some greenscreen-slathered movie set). Camerawork periodically shows pizzazz, but it only works when the shots aren’t chopped to a disorienting blur in the editing room, which isn’t often. For such a big-budget production, the scenarios, sets, and visual effects have a surprising tendency to look cheap; the bullfighting coliseum scene is so absurd and phony-looking, in fact, that it resembles one of those coarse skits that (used to?) open MTV awards shows. Director Thurber co-produced alongside Johnson and several others, and also wrote the script (can someone explain to him how Interpol actually works, though)?

39/100