Carry-On

Year 17, Day 243 - 8/31/25 - Movie #5,127 - LABOR DAY FILM #4

BEFORE: Let's send a Labor Day Weekend SHOUT-out to the hard-working people at the airport - starting with the TSA workers and moving on from there. Security guards, air marshals, airport police. Pilots, flight attendants, gate personnel and baggage handlers - whoa, baggage handlers, that's a JOB and a half, right? And all these people have to put up with regular Joes like you and me who don't show up early enough, so we're all late and anxious and afraid to travel, so the whole building is like this hotbed of emotions to begin with, and then you throw delays and cancellations and pat-downs into the mix, jeez, it's a wonder why anyone who works there is able to get through the day. Remember "going postal" from a few years back, how that entered the vernacular when a few stressed-out postal workers started taking out their stress-induced rage on people mailing stuff?  I'm guessing airport rage is just as strong, and now that things may have cooled down a bit at the P.O., we should be calling it "going airline" or something like that. 

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS! Am I right, people? Is this thing on? What better symbol of stressful jobs everywhere than the good old air traffic controllers? They're under-paid (probably), under-appreciated (definitely) and over-stressed by definition, and that's all on a GOOD day. Here, keep track of these heavier-than-air flying people containers that are circling the airport, all 107 of them waiting to land on 5 runways, and make sure none of them crash into each other while you figure out the best order to tell them to approach. You like playing 5-D chess, right? Make sure none of them are on flight paths that intersect and try to get them all on the ground before any of them run out of gas, which you couldn't possibly predict with 100% accuracy. Oh, and if you fail, a bunch of people are going to die, no pressure. But if that happens we'll give you a couple days off and then probably have you assessed and determine that you just can't handle the stress of this job, so be ready to clean out your desk after the plane crash we're probably going to blame you for. 

And how about those hard-working terrorists? (No, wait, too far, pull it BACK.)

Here's the format breakdown for a very busy August: 

11 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): My Mom Jayne, Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print, Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames, Nickel Boys, Hangman, The Iron Claw, Monster Trucks, The Butterfly Effect 2, Apollo 18, Land

10 watched on Netflix: Martha, Rather, Biggest Heist Ever, Here, Damsel, The Electric State, Hit Man, The Good Nurse, Saturday Night, Carry-On

1 watched on iTunes: Unhinged
2 watched on Amazon Prime: Affairs of State, Twisters
2 watched on Hulu: Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything, Big George Foreman

2 watched on Disney+: Music by John Williams, Moana 2

2 watched on Tubi: Queen & Slim, Paradox (2016)

1 watched in theaters: Superman (2025)

31 TOTAL

Josh Brener AND Jeff Pope carry over from "Saturday Night". I'll preview all the September links tomorrow, I promise. 

THE PLOT: A mysterious traveler blackmails a young TSA agent into letting a dangerous package slip through security and onto a Christmas Eve flight. 

AFTER: Damn, this film is set at LAX on Christmas Eve, I don't know if that's a "Die Hard 2" tribute or what, but I wish I'd known about it. Still I don't think it links to any Christmas movies on my list, so delaying it wouldn't have improved anything except make my linking to September more difficult. 

I'm going to allow this as a semi(?)-accurate portrayal of how the TSA works at the airport to keep passengers safe, of course I say this having no actual knowledge of how those metal detectors or those wands or those full-body scanners really work. I remember being put through the RINGER once by airport security, I think it was on our first or second BBQ Crawl (out of three so far) but I may be mistaken. I had taken to wearing a knee brace because I'd been having trouble with my leg supporting me at times, and not just when I'd been over-served at a beer festival. But as I was about to go into the full-body scanner, I remembered I was wearing the brace and it was SURE to show up on the scan. So I told the TSA agent, "Hey, I'm wearing a knee brace for support..." and I figured that would be the end of it, they'd see it on the scan and say, "Oh, sure, I see it, thanks for the heads-up". Only that is NOT what happened, the agent wanted to take me in a private room and have me remove my pants (I almost said, "Hey, at least buy me dinner first..." but then thought better of it.). I said, Look, if I was up to something or wearing something dangerous, then why would I TELL you about it in advance? Do I look like a terrorist? Wait, don't answer that. Would I be here with my WIFE and be on my way to enjoying delicious BBQ meals in three or four cities, if I had any aim to blow up the plane, then no BBQ, and come on, one look at me and you know I'm all about the BBQ. They agreed to reach under my pants leg (from the bottom, not the top) and swab the knee brace and there was no trace of anything explosive - just sweet, sweet hickory smoke flavor, that's all. 

This movie would have you believe that all you really need to do to get a bomb on board a plane is to have the cell phone number of the TSA agent on duty that day, and another member of your terrorist cartel stationed by his home, ready to kidnap his loved ones and hold them hostage so that he'll ignore the information on the X-ray scanner regarding the contents of a particular piece of carry-on luggage. Well, it's possible but I'm not convinced this is a narrative slam-dunk, because don't the TSA agents work in teams at times? Wouldn't the bomb's contents trip off some kind of sensor or alert, based on the image or the chemical make-up of the bomb or, well, something?  But OK, NITPICK POINT noted and let's move on with the story, you guys are lucky it's the last film of the month and I need to keep this movie thing, umm, moving. 

The plan goes awry when newbie Ethan Kopek, recently rejected from the police academy, is subbed in to work at one of the metal detectors. The terrorists were expecting the regular guy, only it's Christmas Eve and Ethan had been encouraged by his pregnant girlfriend to step up and try harder at work, even if this was just his temp job to replace his failed attempt to become a cop. Sure, NOW his supervisor gives him a chance, on the same day the terrorist's plan is scheduled, isn't that always the way? 

A mystery ear-bud that turns up puts him in contact with the Traveler, who makes him an offer, a life for a bag - all he has to do is ignore the contents of ONE suitcase, and the Traveler's crew won't kill him or his girlfriend. They're mercenaries, they don't really care who they threaten or kill, whatever gets their goals accomplished, and the goal is to get that bag on that plane. Obviously they can't check the bag, because of bomb-sniffing dogs, plus the bomb going off in the cargo hold might not spread the... wait, I'm getting ahead of myself here.  No spoilers anyway.  Ethan can't send a text or an e-mail for help, because the Traveler is clearly nearby, watching him - he manages to send a message on a boarding pass using invisible ink to another agent, but that agent is killed when he gets too close to the terrorists. OK, gotta try something else. 

This turns into a sort of cat-and-mouse game that lasts for the whole film, with the stakes constantly being raised and a lot of back-and-forth, the LAPD gets involved and works the case from another angle, the airport gets closed on one of the biggest travel days of the whole year, and Ethan has to spend the next few hours constantly trying to get one step ahead of the terrorists, and then the terrorists have to keep changing their plan based on his actions, and so on, back and forth, round and round till we reach the end. The LAPD detective heads to the airport with another agent who claims to be from Homeland Security, but is he who he claims to be? Meanwhile the detective's "guy in the chair" back at the station tries to figure out who the target is that the terrorists want to eliminate, and which plane they might be traveling on. 

NITPICK POINT #2: The Traveler has his guy boarding the plane with a black bag that has a red ribbon to identify it. Do you know how many other people at any airport also get this same "genius" idea, to put a red ribbon on their bag so they can find it right away on the conveyor belt? For a long while I had a black bag that looked like a hundred other black bags, and I had to put two ribbons on it, one green and one purple, just so it would stand out in an ocean of black bags with red ribbons on them. It doesn't work if everyone does the same damn thing!  My BFF Andy once used bright tape to spell out a message on his bag that read: "THIS IS NOT YOUR BAG". Effective and hilarious. 

There's plenty of solid action here as Ethan has to race across the airport, behind the scenes at baggage claim, to catch up with the bag on the conveyor belts and pull a classic switcheroo move, which causes the bag to end up in the cargo hold, but, umm, that leads us back to the original point from the beginning, you told us that the bag could NOT go in the cargo hold. One might then think that the bag would be scanned before loaded on the plane, which would mean the jig would be up, but I think if a bag is too big to fit in the overhead compartment they would probably just throw it into the hold, because the flight staff would probably assume that it HAD been scanned. Right? 

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (director of "Black Adam" and "Jungle Cruise")

Also starring Taron Egerton (last seen in "Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium"), Jason Bateman (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler (last seen in "Till"), Theo Rossi (last seen in "Army of the Dead"), Tonatiuh, Logan Marshall-Green (last seen in "Lou"), Dean Norris (last seen in "Men, Women & Children"), Sinqua Walls (last seen in "Otherhood"), Curtiss Cook (last seen in "All Is Bright"), Joe Williamson (last seen in "Lucy in the Sky"), Gil Perez-Abraham (last seen in "The Batman"), Benito Martinez (last seen in "Queen & Slim"), Edwin Kho, Reisha Reynolds, Adam Stephenson (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Sarah Durn (ditto), Michael Scott (last seen in "When We First Met"), Raymond Rehage, Nico Bucher, Jill Flint (last seen in "The Mule"), Kenneth Nance Jr. (last seen in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"), Spencer Crim, Martina Meneses, Robert Larriviere (last seen in "Big George Foreman"), Mustafa Harris (last seen in "The Host"), Sarah S. Fisher, Logan Macrae (last seen in "The Burial"), Joel Griffin (last seen in "Hit Man"), Lawrence Turner (last seen in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), Keyara Milliner, Mark Druhet, Marjorie Parker (last seen in "Project Power"), Wanetah Walmsley (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Damon Lipari (ditto), Thomas O'Sullivan, Luis Arredondo, Erika Ashley, Rosha Washington (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Brandon Morales, David Moncrief (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Jennifer Hamilton Collins, Preston Schrag, Larry Musso, Chris J. Fanguy, Tom Cain, Nicole Collins (last seen in "12 Years a Slave"), Kasia Trepagnier.

RATING: 7 out of 10 people selected for a "random" inspection. Yeah, right. We all know what that means.