A great thriller lives and dies by its complexity. Movies like All the president’s men or Blow out create intricate, detailed worlds of mystery that draw you in before leaving you at the center of the labyrinth to unwind in the days that follow. However, a solid B-thriller is all about simplicity. These are movies like Taken And Telephone booth that you may not necessarily want to put on, but never say no if you find them on cable. What makes these films so fun, and so endlessly rewatchable, is how effectively they wring every last drop of mystery and suspense from a deceptively simple premise. And ContinueNetflix’s new holiday airport thriller, is about as solid a B-tier thriller as you’ll ever find.
The film follows Ethan (Taron Egerton), a bored TSA agent who dreams of becoming a police officer. But as long as he continues to work at LAX, he is determined to pay as little attention to his work as possible, much to the dismay of his newly pregnant girlfriend (Sofia Carson), who would like to see him get promoted or finally join the club . L.A.P.D. Unfortunately for Ethan’s minimal effort, during a Christmas Eve shift at the X-ray machine, he is given an earpiece through which a terrorist (Jason Bateman) tells him that his girlfriend will die unless he passes a certain bag through the machine.
All of these setups take less than 10 minutes to communicate, and now we’re heading into a duel of wits between Ethan and a terrorist with a huge lead and who’s monitoring every security camera in LAX. Director Jaume Collet-Serra is a master of these cable thrillers – with his Blake Lively shark survival film The shoals he’s a particular standout, but it’s these earliest moments when he’s at his best.
While the plots of some films unfold and gradually reveal themselves to the audience, Collet-Serra’s thrillers have the feeling of watching someone create origami, with each fold of the plot crucial, precise and surprisingly complex. His protagonists start with the easy, obvious moves: Ethan tries to call the police on his cell phone under the table and send a text with his Apple Watch, but they are all stopped immediately; now the folds should become more delicate and complicated. Suddenly we’re deep into secret messages, nerve agents, airport codes and TSA tricks, and Collet-Serra beautifully keeps us on the hook for each new revelation or twist in the story.
But for all of Collet-Serra’s talents in this particular subgenre, Continue‘s real strength lies in the performances of its two leads. Egerton and Bateman are on screen or talking for almost every moment of the film’s two-hour running time, and still every delivery and airport chess move crackles with energy until their inevitable, climactic showdown.
Egerton has proven himself as a leading man a few times before, between spying in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman films and playing the piano as Elton John in RocketmanBut Continue It’s the first time the 35-year-old actor has really shown his age and proves he can play an older character with a slower, less gentle action. He gives a quietly determined performance here that only makes you hope he returns for similar roles in all areas of apparently boring service – perhaps he and Collet-Serra can team up for a notary thriller next, since Ben Has Affleck already discussed the Accountant job ?
The real treat here, though, is Jason Bateman, who gets to play sinister in a way he’s never really been allowed to – though Ozark let him dip his toe in the villain pond every now and then. He’s a simple, straightforward evil character that we’ve rarely seen in thrillers in the last decade: he’s just a guy who’s there to get paid and kills a lot of people. But Bateman plays the character with a panache that cleverly hides how much this man enjoys his bad job and how good he is at it. His terrorist is always one step ahead and more than happy to see people like Ethan playing games that Bateman’s character is already confident he has won.
Considering how great both leads are, it should come as no surprise that this is the one and only turbulent break ContinueThe otherwise excellent tension arises when the film abandons the central duel and introduces a police detective (Danielle Deadwyler), who accidentally ends up in the middle of the action. As with so many of these thrillers, the police officer character feels like an unwanted distraction from the main event of the film, and is completely essential to pulling together a plot that was more interested in creating a fun premise than a logical mystery. But it’s hard to blame the film for a lackluster conclusion, when the journey to get there was just as much fun Continue‘S.
In another era, this was the kind of movie that, when you come home for the holidays, you discover that your parents have seen it six or seven times, simply because it’s playing on TNT and they stop watching it every time they see it. search for channels. And who can blame them? Continue is great fun. It won’t blow you away, it won’t replace Die hard like your dad’s favorite winking response what is your favorite Christmas moviebut it will entertain you and everyone watching every time you turn it on. It’s just a shame that you can never catch it halfway on the cable.
Continue is now streaming on Netflix.