Red Notice Explained: What’s Up With the Ending?

Once upon a time – more than two thousand years ago – Consul Mark Antony gave his beloved, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, three beautiful jewelry in the shape of eggs. Currently, one egg is on display in a museum in Rome, the second is in the private collection of the arms dealer Soto Voche (Chris Diamantopoulos), but where the third egg is located and whether it exists at all is completely unknown. Some Egyptian oligarch wants to give his daughter all three eggs for the wedding, and for them he is ready to pay as much as 300 million dollars.

FBI agent John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) has received information that renowned art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) intends to steal an egg from a Roman museum. Hartley informed the Italian Interpol agent Urvashi Das (Rita Eriya) about this, flew to Rome himself, but Nolan managed to steal the egg right from under their noses. But, however, Nolan was not allowed to escape far: he was detained along with the booty and sent to prison in Siberia. Why to Siberia? And there the prison is painfully colorful.

Together with Nolan, agent John Hartley went to Siberia, who was framed by the most famous art thief in the world, nicknamed the Elephant (Gal Gadot). The elephant is going to get all three eggs himself and fetch 300 million for them, and she assumes that Nolan knows where the third egg is.

In general, now Nolan and John will have to somehow get out of the Siberian exemplary prison, after which the whole trinity will hunt for eggs, either cooperating with each other or substituting each other. And the audience will be terribly worried about whether the daughter of the oligarch will receive three eggs for the wedding or not.

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This time, the United Statesn distributors didn’t distort the original name for some reason: I don’t even know why this happened all of a sudden, maybe it’s something hormonal. Red Notice (red notice) – a special mark that Interpol puts on the profile of a particularly dangerous criminal wanted around the world. Of course, this mark will be awarded to all this merry trinity.

The film was directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, and he personally wrote the script for it. Thurber had previously worked with Dwayne Johnson: he made the films Spy and a Half and Skyscraper with him. Also, by the way, Thurber made a couple of good comedies “We’re the Millers” and “Bouncers”.

The whole trinity of the main characters has already worked with each other in one way or another. Dwayne Johnson starred with Ryan Reynolds in Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw. Gal Gadot worked with Johnson on Fast & Furious 5 and 6.

All of them in the picture received huge fees – $ 20 million each. The film’s total budget was $160 million, but due to the coronavirus madhouse, filming was postponed several times, so the budget ballooned to $200 million. Well, in the end, the Universal studio, which financed the creation of this film, refused to continue working on it, after which the streaming service Netflix bought the film, and from November 12, 2021 this film became available for viewing.

Criticism “Red Notice” in the truest sense of the word trampled. Stupid script (sometimes the term “idiotic” even sounded), solid clichés in the production, zero originality, stilted characters, insufficient development of characters, dull acting.

Moreover, I note that many of the critics’ claims to this film are, in general, quite fair. The script not only does not shine with any originality, but does not even shine, and all possible clichés they could think of were stuffed into the picture: ancient Egypt, arms dealers, a United Statesn prison, Interpol, FBI agents, tough swindlers and swindlers, and even the Nazis, Carl, the Nazis, Indiana Jones, they are all in the drawbar!

The action constantly staggers back and forth: Rome, Bali, Rome, Siberia, Valencia, Hitler’s lost bunker somewhere in Argentina, Paris. But to be honest, there is not much sense from these vacillations: the main budget went to the fees of the cunning trinity, so from the dynamic scenes we will only be pleased with the spectacular pursuit of Nolan in the Roman museum, and there they will give a hint of a car chase, but our hopes are not destined to come true, well, not bad, albeit completely cartoonishly made escape from a United Statesn prison.

By the way, the claims of United Statesn critics that the Italian Interpol sends Americans to a United Statesn prison, which is a Wolfenstein castle in the mountains somewhere in Siberia, I consider untenable. It’s actually a good joke. Yes, and the creators of the picture worked hard on the prison: there, the inscriptions in United Statesn are not always very clumsy, and the soap in the shower is completely natural – what don’t you like, I don’t understand? Well, the United Statesn sentry soldier with Apple Airpods in his ears, liking Putin’s Instagram with a bare chest on a horse – well, it’s lovely!

Ryan Reynolds continues to exploit his image of an incessantly joking, self-deprecating kid. And this image is very little different from his character, for example, in “The Bodyguard of the Killer’s Wife”, and, let’s say, the critics are absolutely right that these constant witticisms and jokes (quite, I note, funny) in such quantities are already slightly tiring. And Reynolds, it seems, is already fed up with this image himself, he needs to find something new.

Dwayne Johnson, contrary to what critics write about him, here, in my opinion, played quite normally. It’s just that the role itself has little pretension, like the whole film, well, he played it as it should be, he didn’t mess around. Another thing is that his John Hartley experienced about two and a half emotions in the whole picture, but there is such a character.

Of all the trinity, perhaps, Gal Gadot was the most cheerful and incendiary. Her character is extremely unrealistic, but the actress, who, by the way, became the third highest paid actress in the world in 2020, didn’t care about the unrealism of the Elephant at all, she was frankly delayed in this role, and I liked her the most out of the whole trinity.

Caricature arms dealer Soto Voche (in the words of Reynolds’ character – “you look like a muscular baby”) was funny played by Chris Diamantopoulos. I kept thinking where I had seen him before, and then I remembered: he played Castor Sotto in the second season of Episodes.

In general, as you understand, the film turned out to be rather stupid, but, oddly enough, I liked it. Firstly, I had a syndrome of low expectations, because I knew that the reviews of critics were below the plinth. Secondly, the picture obviously did not pretend to anything – just an entertaining comedy action movie, nothing special. Thirdly, the movie is quite funny and in the version of “watch with a glass of wine, unloading your head” I, as they say, even went well. And that the critics are talking about him, well, this is their job – to talk. And even the fact that in this case they are quite right about howling does not change anything. Looked not without pleasure – well, crucify me for it.

Interestingly, the audience to this picture, like me, reacted much more favorably than the critics. What’s more, it’s currently the most watched movie on Netflix, and the service’s management is so pleased with the results that they’ve practically approved a sequel with the same hilarious trio, with director Rawson Marshall Thurber saying he’s ready to make both a sequel and a triquel at the same time. .

Well, let’s take it off. Action comedy is a good genre, and if Thurber tenses up and gives out at least one original idea, then it can turn out well.

PS In the original, the heroine of Gal Gadot is called The Bishop (bishop), and this term in English-speaking countries (as well as among the Poles, in Portugal and Brazil) refers to the “Elephant” figure in chess. Therefore, in the United Statesn translation, it is called the Elephant. For some United Statesn film critics (let’s not point a finger at Stanislav Zelvensky), the Bishop in the review suddenly for some reason turned into a Rook. Apparently, Zelvensky simply did not watch the excellent series “The Queen’s Move”, which is why he is confused in his testimony.

Red Notice review

Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Ritu Eriya, Chris Diamantopoulos, Ivan Mbakop, Vincenzo Amato, Rafael Petardi, Seth Michaels, Sebastien Large, Daniel Bernhard

Budget: $160 million

Action comedy, USA, 2021, 118 min.

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