By Tanille Williams

Despite having a star-studded cast, Red Notice is just a below standard, bland, rushed and predictable action/adventure movie.

Released by Netflix on November 12, directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and produced by Bad Version Inc, Red Notice boasts among its cast Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Gal Gadot, Deadpool‘s Ryan Reynolds and a cameo performance from singer Ed Sheeran.

Johnson and Reynolds worked together previously in Fast and the Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw while Gadot and Johnson also worked together in the fifth and sixth Fast and the Furious instalments. Undoubtedly the actors were successful on the previous projects that have connected them, but somehow Red Notice can’t hold a candle to those movies.

The film, co-produced by Johnson, tells a fabricated story surrounding Cleopatra’s eggs, takes you on the “adventurous” journey of two men – one an FBI agent and the other an elusive art thief – who both have encounters with ‘the Bishop’, played by Gal Gadot, a female art thief who seems to be one step ahead of the guys all the time.

Red Notice boasts an estimated US$200-million budget, yet many other movies that fall under the same genre and utilise a similar budget are not as substandard as it.

Bad Boys, estimated to cost $18 million; Rush Hour, $35 million; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, $200 million; and Man from U.N.C.L.E at $85 million are all a better watch than Red Notice, and that’s just to name a few.

The film heavily and unnecessarily incorporates CGI and green screens, giving it an intangible feel.

The film is far from adventurous, with many instances where there is obvious use of green screen and, making things worse, the characters spend just around five minutes in location, not really allowing the viewer to enjoy the scenery.

The obvious use of drones could have been utilised better in terms of giving a broad view of the different places in Rome where the characters were present – you would never know the film was done in that city if they didn’t mention it. A CGI’ed bull was just awful, making it hard to feel concerned for anyone who encountered it because it seemed so unreal.

This film was bland from beginning ’til end, based on the fact that it utilised more dialogue than conventionally associated with action movies and adventure.

In action and adventure movies, there shouldn’t be so much talking and, throughout Red Notice, the characters seemed to spend less time showing than telling you what was happening.

The narration at the beginning of the film was also so unnecessary. Why simply talk about the backstory when there are more creative and descriptive ways to set the scene for the audience?

As examples, in Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, the story was told about a girl who risked her life to save her friends by using her corpse to create a shield to protect half bloods, and in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the audience is introduced to the story of young Star Lord. Both films utilised flashbacks that gave you a sense of adventure while also helping you understand what those movies stories were about .

Switching back to Red Notice, predictability added to the blandness of the film. The overuse of conventions in almost every scene made everything expected. The audience could easily know what is going to happen before it actually does.

For example, a car chase scene in the jungle was reminiscent of the car chase scene at the Mexican border in Fast and the Furious 4.

Red Notice also presented the predictable odd couple working together, heirloom that is the key to unlocking something important, tug of war with precious object that falls and someone has to catch it, double cross, safe where precious object is stashed, dancing scene in action movie, wearing suits, ending up in prison and so on.

To be fair, the film was made during unstable times and some of its faults may have been in some way due to the constraints caused the pandemic. Obviously, because of social distancing, multiple person scenes and adventures in foreign countries may have been forbidden, even for Johnson, which is likely the reason for the heavy use of CGI and green screen.

The film did seem a bit rushed with the use of the conventions and the inconsistencies of some dialogue and supporting actors and so on. Also, the comedy, action and adventure elements of the movie didn’t seem to compliment each other well. Instead they seemed separated – for example there wasn’t much action during the trip in search of the third egg, simple one-on-one fights, comedy only happening when persons stopped to talk or when persons weren’t doing anything else. All this more than likely is because of the pandemic but, with a $200-million budget and big names, a blockbuster hit movie was expected, not this.