Carry-On

Jaume Collet-Serra gives his hero an unusual assignment: do nothing. Taron Egerton plays a screener whose only task is to let one case through the scanner unopened, so the suspense comes from restraint rather than from action. Screenwriter T.J. Fixman spent years writing Ratchet & Clank games before this, and he has described the story as a staging of the trolley problem. The location shapes the texture. The production took over the decommissioned old terminal at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and redressed it as LAX; only the exteriors of the control tower and the famous Theme Building come from the real airport. That access is why the camera can wander through baggage sorting areas no passenger ever sees. Collet-Serra says he wanted stillness from his villain, arguing that the smarter a bad guy is, the less he needs to do, and Jason Bateman spends most of his scenes as a voice in an earbud. Midway through, the kind of pressure changes: the checkpoint is abandoned for a car chase staged as one extended take. A good fit if you want the tension to rest on a man who has to stay still and comply. Not for anyone who wants the enclosed checkpoint squeeze held to the end, because the last stretch leaves the terminal behind.