A slick, easy-to-watch airport thriller with strong momentum and a playful holiday hook, but it leans heavily on familiar action-movie beats and a fairly thin premise. The cast and pacing keep it moving, even when the logic gets wobbly.
Carry-On
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Thriller · Action
Thu · 2h 0m
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Sofia Carson
Overview
An airport security officer races to outsmart a mysterious traveler forcing him to let a dangerous item slip onto a Christmas Eve flight.
Director
Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast
Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Sofia Carson
Curator Review
Verdict
A slick, easy-to-watch airport thriller with strong momentum and a playful holiday hook, but it leans heavily on familiar action-movie beats and a fairly thin premise. The cast and pacing keep it moving, even when the logic gets wobbly.
Best for
Viewers who want a fast, low-commitment thriller
Fans of airport, hostage, or ticking-clock setups
People in the mood for a holiday-season action movie
Audiences who enjoy charismatic cat-and-mouse performances
Skip if
You want airtight plotting
You dislike formulaic studio thrillers
You prefer grounded realism over heightened suspense
You are looking for something especially original or surprising
Overview
Carry-On is built to move, and for the most part it does. The airport setting gives the movie an efficient pressure-cooker structure, and the Christmas Eve backdrop adds just enough seasonal irony to make the whole thing feel like a premium cable thriller with a bigger budget and sharper polish.
Worth noting
Taron Egerton gives the film its engine, while Jason Bateman supplies a colder, more controlled menace than the material really deserves. The movie knows how to keep a chase alive, and it understands the basic pleasures of a one-location crisis story: deadlines, surveillance, split-second decisions, and escalating bad choices.
Bottom line
What holds it back is familiarity. Once the setup is in place, the film rarely strays far from the lane you expect it to take, and some of the character logic feels engineered rather than earned. Still, as a piece of streamlined crowd-pleasing suspense, it lands well enough to recommend with caveats.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Joeleex (3.5★) · 20118 likes
Paul Blart wouldn’t have let it get that far
Megan (stoobs) Cruz (3★) · 14000 likes
It’s been a tough year and I think we’ve all earned a little fun copaganda. As a treat.
Bella (5★) · 13102 likes
A little too many Jason Bateman voiceovers, I kept thinking the fox from Zootopia turned evil
zoë rose bryant (3.5★) · 11337 likes
if jason bateman was in my ear giving me orders this would’ve been a much different movie
nalu (4.5★) · 7888 likes
i guess a new $ANTO$ album is available on SoundCloud and Patreon
Themes
airport security, cat-and-mouse suspense, holiday-season thriller, ordinary worker under pressure, terrorism threat, moral compromise, surveillance and control, single-night crisis