Red Notice: How is the film with Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson

After a long wait and several production slowdowns due to the pandemic, the highest budget Netflix Original film is finally available to all subscribers to the service. However, with its cost of over 200 million dollars, Red Notice is not a simple image operation to give prestige to the platform’s catalog thanks to the attraction of three stars of the caliber of Gal Gadot, Dwayne Johnson And Ryan Reynolds, but an attempt to give life to a real flagship Netflix franchise, capable of ranging between comedy, adventure and action. After the commercial successes of A Spy and a Half and Skyscraper, Rawson Marshall Thurber reunites with The Rock for a work of pure and unbridled fun, scripted by himself, which has its own narrative center of gravity in the former wrestler.

Johnson plays John Hartley, an FBI profiler who finds himself at the center of a challenge between the two main art thieves in the world, namely Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) and The Standard Bearer (Gal Gadot). The objects of the dispute are the legendary three eggs of Cleopatra, a token of love given by Marco Antonio to the famous Egyptian queen (who will soon be interpreted by Gal Gadot). Between chases and twists, betrayals and alliances, thus begins a challenge across the globe to get your hands on these precious artifacts.

Gal Gadot, Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds in a hilarious heist movie

Rawson Marshall Thurber confirms his skills in the management of choral comedies, already highlighted in Balls to the leap – Dodgeball and As you are dealing with the family, staging a tale that brilliantly mixes laughter and adrenaline, making the most of a trio of protagonists of the exception. Gal Gadot shines above all, in perfect balance between the physicality of an action heroine she has already brought on stage with Wonder Woman and nuances of a femme fatale da noir 40s. As the minutes go by, however, the work of the director and screenwriter emerges on the love / hate between the two male protagonists, which generates exquisite buddy movie moments, seasoned with well-balanced humor, pleasant self-deprecating jokes (such as the mention of the ” rival ”of The Rock Vin Diesel) and a multitude of quotes, which will surely delight the most hardened cinephiles.

Between Indiana Jones (the journey around the world, the inevitable Nazism, the x to dig, the whistled theme), James Bond (the mix between reckless action and elegance in clothing), Jurassic Park (on which one of the dialogues is centered more successful), we lose count of the references and homages that make Red Notice a proudly derivative heist movie but with its own soul, which emerges even in the most bizarre moments. Undoubtedly thanks to the palpable chemistry between the actors, but also to a screenplay that manages to constantly walk the thin thread that separates a brilliant comedy from a ridiculous one and that slips only when looking for serious nuances that are not in tune with the whole, such as the problems of protagonists with paternal figures, only sketched without too much conviction.

Will there be Red Notice 2?

Despite the production difficulties, evident above all in some locations recreated in a false way due to the health situation, Red Notice hits the target, bringing to the public a comedy increasingly difficult to see on the big and small screen: exaggerated, full of well-known faces, popular in the most positive sense of the term and never crossed by the idea of ​​taking oneself seriously. A project that is a candidate to become in a short time one of the most viewed Netflix original products ever and which in all likelihood will have one or more followers, on which the epilogue leaves a door wide open.