A game of cats and mice around expensive works of art. This is what the very pleasing film offers Red Notice by Rawson Marshall Thurber, available this Friday on Netflix. Gal Gadot, Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds respectively embody a gifted criminal, an FBI agent and an international thief entangled in adventures as joyful as the aftershocks are murderous.
The director of‘Almost Secret Agents and of Skyscraper knows how to do it when it comes to wacky humor and hilarious action. His wacky robbery scenario is cut to the line and we understand how he attracted performers who are among the biggest stars in the world.
A trio of shock
The crossroads of this trio transport them from famous museums to isolated prisons through posh evenings. A real moment of happiness and relaxation! “None of us were trying to pull the blanket over,” Ryan Reynolds said in the press kit. Our way of working was akin to the practices of a hip-hop club where everyone is able to stand back and applaud the performance of others. The chemistry between them is one of the successes to be credited to the filmmaker. The incessant teasing that the characters exchange as their references to great moments in popular culture (Indiana Jones in the lead) are sources of laughter in the heart of spectacular sequences.
Watching Dwayne Johnson drag Gal Gadot onto the dance floor or try to escape from a Siberian prison with Ryan Reynolds offers beautiful moments of sensuality and thrills but above all of the perfectly assumed second degree. “This is an action and adventure comedy,” says the director, and for me, the comedy part requires having a solid basic frame for each scene. This rigor did not prevent him from letting his little world improvise on the side of the dialogues which reinforces the naturalness of the whole. It’s very simple: hardly Red Notice it ends that we want to find the protagonists in new adventures, they are so endearing and well sketched.
“I hope I won’t miss you too much”, declares the character of Gal Gadot at the end of the final credits. We would be delighted to find this brilliant adventurer and her two accomplices just as charismatic as her.