It takes elements from each installment of the original _Die Hard_ trilogy and waters it down to artless streaming slob. Where are the fun, cheesy one-liners? Where’s the blood and sweat? These things used to have so much personality and charm, shouldn’t we bring that stuff back if we’re going to be this derivative? With _Carry On_ there’s not much worth remembering, in fact most of it has already left my memory because of how bland, formulaic and dumb it is. The protagonist feels like a discount John McClane, Sofia Carson can’t act, Theo Rossi is still playing his awful character from _The Penguin_ and every time the movie cuts back to Danielle Deadwyler it immediately loses a lot of steam. As with a lot of these streaming movies, the score, sound mix and lighting are all professionally done while simultaneously trying their absolute hardest to not be interesting in any way. As a generic vehicle for tension it’s not the worst thing ever, however there’s this extended 15-20 minute set piece in the latest Mission Impossible operating on a somewhat similar premise (tracking down a bomb at an airport), which is more creative, engaging and tense than this entire movie. You’ll probably get more out of watching that sequence.

3/10


Ps: there’s this ‘one take’ tracking shot of a fight that takes place in a car, which is one of the film’s only interesting tonal risks, however the technical execution made it one of the biggest unintentional laughs of the year for me. The visual effects industry is in dire need of some kind of quality control, just like all the streaming services who keep making stuff like this.