Taron Egerton's Netflix Action Movie Is The Perfect Holiday Season Watch

As the 2025 festive season approaches, the best Christmas movies of all time will once again begin to dominate our viewing schedules. That means Kevin McCallister will be humiliating the Wet Bandits, the Grinch will be learning to embrace his humanity, and Buddy the Elf will be charming his way through New York and teaching James Caan the meaning of Christmas. But sometimes it's nice to embrace some alternative Christmas movies, and Netflix has an interesting option in the form of "Carry-On."

If you like Jason Bateman playing against type as a psychopathic killer and plots that mirror action classics of a bygone time, then this is the perfect film for you. "Carry-On" is also the perfect thriller for fans of Christmas action movies like "Die Hard," mainly because it is "Die Hard 2."

The movie stars Taron Egerton as TSA officer Ethan Kopek, who's hoping to become a cop after toiling away at LAX for some time. Unfortunately, he's been rejected from the police academy due to his own dad being a straight-up crook, but he's given a chance to prove his worth after Bateman's mysterious mercenary, known only as The Traveler, tries to execute a terrorist plot on his watch. Oh, and it all takes place on Christmas Eve, just in case you were wondering what a movie about a deadly nerve agent being unleashed at an airport had to do with festive cheer. 

If you're thinking, "Hey, that's just 'Die Hard 2' with nerve gas," you're on the right track. But Netflix's version of the Bruce Willis classic has enough going for it that it's definitely worth a watch this holiday season if you missed it last year.

"Carry-On" is, like many Netflix movies, an amalgam of several films that came before. But unlike Dylan Sprouse's abject "Die Hard"-like action movie, "Carry-On" does some neat stuff that differentiates it from other streaming offerings that seem to be doing pale impressions of better features.

For one thing, Ethan Kopek is forced to interact with The Traveler via an earpiece that's delivered to his desk at the security section of LAX. Bateman's bad guy then delivers his orders via the earpiece, which is hardly the most original dynamic for an action movie, but it is compelling to watch Ethan try to concoct a solution as he's forced to allow a dodgy package through the X-ray machine. Seeing him figure out how to get around his predicament makes for an interesting and tense enough scene that has quite a lot in common with the killer thriller "Drop," an overlooked 2025 effort that uses a similar setup to the earpiece section of "Carry-On" and arguably does it just as well, if not better.

There's also an absolutely crazy action sequence that comes entirely out of nowhere, which, without spoiling it, involves a fight in a car, a 360-degree camera move, and dodgy VFX that's unlike pretty much anything else in the film. Otherwise, Egerton is good, Bateman is a little too convincing as a man without any regard for human life, and it's got the actress who's fast-becoming the queen of the Netflix romantic drama, Sofia Carson, playing Ethan's pregnant girlfriend Nora Parisi.

If you're on the fence about whether to give "Carry-On" a watch this season, might I firstly point out that it's at least probably a better choice than Dwayne Johnson's critically panned Christmas movie "Red One," which is currently dominating Prime Video. But aside from being better than The Rock's festive dud, "Carry-On" has quite a lot working in its favor.

Firstly, the critics liked it. "Carry-On" has an 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes based on a very solid 107 reviews. In general, reviewers seem united in their view of the film as not necessarily doing anything new or groundbreaking but managing to do what it does very well. Which is fair. The film certainly keeps you invested throughout, mostly thanks to a solid premise and some better-than-average performances. As Randy Myers of the San Jose Mercury News wrote, while the film doesn't quite succeed in its aspirations to become "a new 'Die Hard' for the holidays," it's still "one smooth and exciting flight."

The film is also directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, which might not be a point in its favor, considering this is the man responsible for overseeing 2022's "Black Adam," a movie that /Film's Witney Seibold described as "a superhero movie, but worse." Collet-Serra is also responsible for several entries in the old-man Liam Neeson oeuvre, which may or may not pique your interest depending on how you feel about the actor's late career switch to non-stop actioners. Also, "Non-Stop" was actually one of the old man Neeson movies directed by Collet-Serra, and it's one of the better ones. So, if you're in the mood for some action this Christmas and want to try something different, you can certainly do a lot worse than "Carry-On."