Red Notice comes with a major twist, but it’s actually foreshadowed quite early into the movie.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Red Notice, now playing in select theaters and on Netflix.
Red Notice is Netflix’s wise-cracking, high-adrenaline attempt at a museum heist movie, which — from the Indiana Jones franchise to The Thomas Crown Affair to Tenet — is almost a genre unto itself. Such films depend heavily on secret-keeping and unexpected turns, and Red Notice is no different. There are dupes and masks, deep-faked safecracking and a final twist that ties up the whole movie in a neat bow (while teasing a possible sequel). In fact, to anyone paying close attention, the action-comedy gives itself away in its opening scene and then continues toying with the audience throughout.
Dwayne Johnson is John Hartley, an FBI agent contracted by a Roman museum to help protect a priceless artifact, one of three eggs that were gifted to Cleopatra by Mark Antony on their wedding day. The museum is convinced that the egg is safe, but Agent Hartley believes it might’ve already been stolen, and a thermal scan proves him right. It’s been swapped with a convincing copy, made by the world’s second-best art thief, Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds). Booth is second best because the most wanted art thief is none other than Gal Gadot as Sarah Black, also known as the Bishop. When the Bishop frames Agent Hartley, he and Booth end up in the same maximum-security mountaintop prison and are forced to work together, to different ends. Booth wants to best the Bishop so he can reclaim his notorious title. Hartley wants to clear his name and arrest the woman that has long eluded him.
But Red Notice drops clues to its plot twist just about as regularly as Reynold drops one-liners. At one point, Booth literally explains the concept of foreshadowing to Hartley, who he says doesn’t look like an English major. Early in the film, Booth mentions that he’s six for six when it comes to breaking out of prison, and so it’s not much of a surprise that he and Hartley break out of prison fairly easily. But the movie goes out of its way to foreshadow its biggest twist, concerning the true identity and motive of its main character.
In Red Notice‘s first big action scene, when it seems like Agent Hartley has Booth cornered, Booth quips that maybe the FBI agent is really the bad guy. Curiously, Hartley doesn’t respond, other than to say he doesn’t have to show Booth a badge because he has a gun. Later, when the Bishop has transferred eight million dollars to an offshore account in an attempt to implicate Hartley, Inspector Das says she finds it strange that she hadn’t heard of him until only a few days before the first egg went missing. Then, as Hartley is dancing with the Bishop at criminal playboy Sotto Voce’s party, he asks if she works with a partner and suggests she couldn’t have pulled off all of her crimes on her own. Finally, he confides in Booth that his father was a con man.
Red Notice‘s ultimate reveal is that Hartley isn’t a squeaky clean FBI agent: he’s also the Bishop, and he and Sarah Black (who, it turns out, are an item) have orchestrated the entire heist together. This explains why he’s so good at, well, crime as Booth observes during their attempt to steal the second egg from Voce’s vault. But there were other hints along the way. For example, the Bishop leaves an imprint of a chess piece on the fake eggs, and chess, Hartley points out, is played with two bishops. It’s also quite obvious, in retrospect, that Hartley let Black make off with the authentic egg back in Bali when his driver alerted him to the fact that the vehicle door was open. Hartley and the Bishop’s flirtation throughout the movie is far too familiar for people who’ve either never met or who are diametrically opposed enemies, and his singular focus on always getting back to her makes sense once it’s clear they’re in a relationship.
The news is a shock to third wheel Booth, who processes it by replaying all of Hartley’s vague statements (“maybe I am the bad guy,” “you don’t know me”) in his head. That’s when the aware-he’s-in-a-screenplay persona of Reynolds references his own final twist: he’s frozen their assets and wants their help on his next score at the Louvre.
Red Notice is currently in select theaters and streaming on Netflix.
About The Author
Credit: Source link
