“Red Notice” wants to be a globe-trotting caper about a thief, a cop and a museum heist. What it delivers is a comedy that doesn’t bother hiding its contempt for its own material. The film is a disaster, and it knows it.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot
Dwayne Johnson plays Agent John Hartley, a career lawman whose job is to stop criminals. Ryan Reynolds plays Nolan Booth, a thief who spends his time stealing art and getting caught. Gal Gadot plays Sarah Shameran, a museum curator who turns out to be the film’s real villain. The trio spend most of the movie running from each other while chasing a stolen painting across Europe.
The premise is simple enough. A thief, a cop and a stolen masterpiece should be the engine of a fun summer comedy. Instead, the film leans on lazy gags about Reynolds being too small to fit through a door and Johnson being too big to hide anywhere. The jokes land once, maybe twice, then wear thin fast.
The Plot That Never Arrives
The plot barely matters. Booth steals a painting, Shameran wants it back, and Hartley is supposed to catch both of them. That’s the whole story. The film spends an hour setting up a chase that never really gets going, then rushes through the final act to get everyone home before anyone remembers why they were running.
There’s a brief moment where the film tries to build tension around a security system and a countdown clock. It fails. The movie is more interested in its characters’ physical comedy than in any actual stakes.
Gadot’s Villainy
Gal Gadot’s Shameran is meant to be the film’s twist. She’s not. She’s a villain who exists to give the other two reasons to fight, and her plan is so vague it barely registers as a threat. The film keeps promising a twist about her identity, then never delivers one. By the end, the reveal that she’s the bad guy feels less like a surprise and more like a shrug.
The supporting cast fares no better. A British actor plays a museum director who gets a few lines about protecting art, then disappears. A German actor shows up briefly as a police chief who doesn’t get much to do. None of them are given anything worth remembering.
The Comedy Problem
The film is trying to be funny, but its sense of humor is limited to sight gags and one-liners. Reynolds delivers a string of quips about his own small stature, and Johnson delivers a few jokes about his size. Neither lands with much force. The film also leans heavily on physical comedy involving doors, windows and tight spaces, none of which add up to anything resembling wit.
The script, written by Rawson Marshall Thurber, isn’t built for subtlety. It’s built for broad, loud reactions, and it gets them. The problem is that those reactions feel forced, not earned. The film treats its characters as punchlines rather than people, and that’s a fatal flaw for a comedy that depends on caring about them.
The Technical Side
The production values are high. The locations are beautiful, the action sequences are well-choreographed, and the cinematography is sharp. None of it matters when the film underneath is this weak. The music swells during chases that don’t feel urgent, and the editing cuts between characters who barely know each other.
The film runs 122 minutes, and it feels longer than that. The pacing drags in the middle, where the characters spend too much time talking past each other instead of moving toward a goal. By the time the credits roll, you’ll be glad it’s over.
The Verdict
“Red Notice” is a failure on almost every level. It has a talented cast, a budget that could have bought a real script, and a premise that could have been great. Instead, it’s a bloated, unfunny mess that wastes its talent on a plot that barely exists.
The film’s best moments come from the actors working against the material, not with it. Johnson and Reynolds share a genuine chemistry, but the script never gives them anything worth playing off each other. Gadot gets the worst of it, reduced to a villain with no clear motive and no real screen presence.
There’s nothing here that rewards a second watch. The jokes aren’t clever, the plot isn’t coherent, and the performances are held back by a script that doesn’t know what it wants to say.
Key Facts
– Title: Red Notice
– Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
– Runtime: 122 minutes
– Score: 3.7/10
“Red Notice” is a comedy that doesn’t understand why its own jokes don’t work. It’s a chase movie that doesn’t care about the chase. It’s a film about three people who should be having fun together, and it can’t even manage that. The final score is 3.7 out of 10.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
