Red Notice landed on Netflix in November 2021 with three of the biggest names in the business and a premise built on Cleopatra’s lost wedding gifts. Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot, all in one film, all chasing the same three jeweled eggs. It runs 118 minutes. It scored 37 out of 100 on Metacritic, a 3.7 out of 10. That number is the whole story.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Three Eggs and a Roman General
The film opens in the 1st century BC. Roman general Mark Antony gives Egyptian queen Cleopatra three bejeweled eggs as a wedding gift. The eggs vanish into history. Two turn up in 1907, found by a farmer. The third stays lost for more than 2,000 years. That is the engine of the plot, and it is a good one: a treasure with a documented past, a missing piece, and a reason for everyone to want it.
Rawson Marshall Thurber wrote and directed. It is his third film with Johnson, after Central Intelligence in 2016 and Skyscraper in 2018. That partnership has a track record, and Red Notice leans on it hard. Thurber knows how to stage a set piece. He knows how to keep a scene moving. What he does not do here is give any of it weight.
Hartley, Booth and the Bishop
In the present day, John Hartley is an FBI profiler. He investigates the theft of one of the eggs from the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, working alongside Interpol agent Urvashi Das. Nolan Booth is the globally wanted art thief who took it. Booth escapes to his home in Bali, where Hartley and Interpol catch up with him. They arrest him. Then Sarah “The Bishop” Black, Booth’s main rival, steals the egg and frames Hartley for it.
Das has Hartley incarcerated in a remote Russian prison with Booth, believing he is responsible for the theft. That is the setup: two men who hate each other, locked in the same cell. Hartley proposes a deal. Help him catch Black, and Booth becomes the number one art thief in the world while Hartley’s name gets cleared. They break out and head for Valencia, where the second egg sits in the possession of arms dealer Sotto Voce.
A Masquerade Ball and a Vault
They infiltrate Voce’s masquerade ball and fight Black inside his vault for the egg. Black reveals she is working with Voce. They torture Hartley until Booth gives up the location of the third egg. Then Black betrays Voce and leaves for Egypt, where Booth claimed the egg is. Booth admits he lied. The egg is in Argentina, in a secret location inscribed on his late father’s watch, a watch that once belonged to Rudolph Zeich, Adolf Hitler’s personal art curator.
In the jungle they find a bunker full of Nazi artifacts, the third egg among them. Black shows up to take it. Das and the police interrupt. The three escape. What follows is the machinery of a heist film doing its final turns, and by then the movie has stopped pretending to be about anything except the next location.
Johnson and Reynolds Do the Work
The cast is the reason to watch, and the film knows it. Johnson plays Hartley with the straight-faced charm he has built a career on. Reynolds plays Booth as a motormouth, the same register he has used in everything for a decade. Gadot gets the coolest assignment as Black, a thief with a reputation and a wardrobe. Ritu Arya plays Inspector Das, the Interpol agent who spends most of the film one step behind everyone.
The supporting cast fills in the edges. Chris Diamantopoulos is Sotto Voce. Ivan Mbakop is Tambwe. Vincenzo Amato is Director Gallo. Rafael Petardi is Security Chief Ricci. Brenna Marie Narayan appears as Cleopatra. Daniel Bernhardt cameos as Drago Grande. Ed Sheeran shows up as himself, uncredited.
Critics split on the film. The plot and the screenwriting took the hits. Johnson and Reynolds took the praise, along with the action sequences and the humor. That split is fair. The two leads have chemistry, and the film is funniest when it lets them bicker. The action is clean and readable. The problem is everything holding it together.
A Tagline That Says It All
The tagline is “Pro and cons.” Read it again. It is not a joke that lands. It is not a pun that works. It is a typo that nobody caught, or a phrase that nobody thought through, standing in for the entire marketing campaign of a film that cost a fortune and stars three of the biggest names in the business. A tagline is supposed to sell the movie. This one reads like a placeholder that survived to print.
That is Red Notice in miniature. Every element is in place. The cast is right. The locations are right. The premise is right. The execution is a series of near-misses, and the tagline is the one that got through anyway. A film this expensive should not have a typo on the poster. A film this expensive should not feel like a first draft with a budget.
Netflix Numbers and the Sequels
Netflix says Red Notice became the most-watched film in its debut weekend. It says the film was the most-watched on the platform until KPop Demon Hunters surpassed it in 2025. It also became the 5th most-streamed movie title of 2021. Those are the platform’s own figures, and they are the numbers that matter to Netflix. A film can be a hit and still be bad. Red Notice is both.
The film was originally planned for release by Universal Pictures before Netflix acquired it. It began a limited theatrical release on November 5, 2021, then streamed on the platform on November 12, 2021. Two sequels are in development and will be filmed back-to-back. Johnson, Reynolds, Gadot and Thurber are all expected to return.
That is the part worth watching. Netflix has decided Red Notice is a franchise, and the sequels will tell us whether the first film was a misfire or a template. If the next two fix the script and keep the cast, the series could work. If they repeat this, the numbers will still be big and the films will still be forgettable. The 37 on Metacritic is not an accident. It is a measurement.
What the Score Means
A 3.7 out of 10 is a failing grade, and Red Notice earns it. The film has three movie stars, a globe-trotting plot, a treasure with real history behind it, and a director who has made this kind of film before. It has every advantage. What it does not have is a script that treats any of it as more than a delivery system for the next set piece.
The eggs are a good idea. Cleopatra, Mark Antony, a wedding gift lost for two millennia, a farmer in 1907, a Nazi art curator, a watch, a bunker in Argentina. That is a chain of detail with real texture. The film runs through it without stopping. It never lets a single one of those ideas breathe. It moves from Rome to Bali to a Russian prison to Valencia to Egypt to Argentina, and at no point does any location feel like a place rather than a backdrop.
Johnson and Reynolds are the reason the film is watchable. They are also the reason it is frustrating. Both men can carry a movie. Both men have carried better movies than this. Gadot is underused as Black, a character with more potential than the script gives her. Arya is stuck playing the pursuer, which means she spends the film reacting to things other people did.
The action sequences are competent. The humor lands often enough. The runtime is 118 minutes, which is not long, and the film still feels like it is padding. The film is not boring because it is slow. It is boring because it is busy. It keeps moving so it never has to sit still and be about something.
Netflix will make the sequels. The viewing numbers justify it. But a hit is not a good film, and Red Notice is proof. It is a 3.7 out of 10. The cast deserved better. The premise deserved better. The tagline should have been the first warning.
Red Notice: 3.7 of 10
The Numbers Behind Red Notice
- Title: Red Notice
- Year: 2021
- Director and writer: Rawson Marshall Thurber
- Runtime: 118 minutes
- Genres: Action, Comedy, Crime
- Tagline: “Pro and cons.”
- Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Ritu Arya
- Metacritic: 37/100
- Score: 3.7 of 10
- Theatrical release: November 5, 2021
- Netflix streaming: November 12, 2021
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