Red Notice | |
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Directed by | Rawson Marshall Thurber |
Written by | Rawson Marshall Thurber |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Markus Förderer |
Edited by |
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Music by | Steve Jablonsky |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Netflix |
Release date |
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Running time | 118 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $200 million[1] |
Box office | $2 million+[2] |
Red Notice is a 2021 American action comedy film written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. It stars Dwayne Johnson as an FBI agent who reluctantly teams up with a renowned art thief (Ryan Reynolds) in order to catch an even more notorious criminal (Gal Gadot). The film marks the third collaboration between Thurber and Johnson following Central Intelligence (2016) and Skyscraper (2018).
Originally planned for release by Universal Pictures, the film was acquired by Netflix for distribution.[3] It began a limited theatrical release on November 5, 2021[4] before digitally streaming on the platform on November 12, 2021. While the film received generally negative reviews from critics, it became the most-watched film in its debut weekend on Netflix, as well as the second-most-watched film within 28 days of release on the platform.
Two thousand years ago, Marcus Antonius gifts Cleopatra three bejeweled eggs as a wedding gift symbolizing his devotion. The eggs are lost to time until two are found by a farmer in 1907, but the last one remains lost.
In 2021, Special Agent John Hartley, a criminal profiler for the FBI, is assigned to assist Interpol agent Urvashi Das in investigating the potential theft of one of the eggs kept on display at the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome after being informed there may be a plan in place to steal it and that it may have already been stolen. The head of security dismisses the concerns after they arrive and the egg appears to still be there, but Hartley determines the egg on display is a forgery and the real egg has been stolen, so Das has the room locked down. However, before the room is sealed shut, international art thief Nolan Booth manages to escape, pursued by Hartley. Booth eventually escapes to his home in Bali with the egg, but finds Hartley waiting for him, along with Das and an Interpol strike team. They arrest Booth and take the egg into custody. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Booth's main competition, Sarah Black, also known as the "The Bishop", is disguised as one of the strike team members and swaps the real egg with another forgery in the back of the vehicle. The next day, Das confronts Hartley believing he's responsible for the egg's theft. As a result, she has him incarcerated in a remote Russian prison in the same cell as Booth.
Shortly after arrival, they are brought to Black where she proposes to Booth they work together to find the third egg, revealing to Hartley that he does in fact know of its whereabouts. Booth declines her modest offer, and she departs stating she'll find the second egg; when she does, she warns that his share will be less. Hartley suggests he and Booth work together to beat Black. If Booth helps him imprison Black then Booth will take her place as the number one art thief in the world. The pair escapes from prison and heads to Valencia to steal the second egg, in the possession of notorious arms dealer Sotto Voce who is having a masquerade ball. There, they encounter Black, who also intends to steal it. The three arrive in Voce's vault where Hartley and Booth fight Black using a variety of melee weapons on display in the vault before she handcuffs them together. Voce arrives with his security detail and apprehends the men while Black reveals she and Voce are working together.
They torture Hartley and, believing Booth has divulged the location of the third egg, Black double-crosses Voce and leaves for Egypt where Booth claims it is. After leaving Valencia, Booth reveals to Hartley that the egg is in fact in Argentina, a location only he knows as it was inscribed on his late father's beloved watch which had once belonged to Adolf Hitler's personal art curator Rudolph Zeich. After the Third Reich fell in 1945, Zeich fled Europe for Argentina with the egg. The duo searches the jungles of Argentina where they find a secret bunker. Inside are countless Nazi artifacts, among them the third egg. Black arrives to steal the egg from the duo at gunpoint, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Das and a team of local police. Hartley, Booth, and Black escape in an antique 1931 Mercedes-Benz 770, driving through an abandoned copper mine near the bunker, being chased by Das in an armored vehicle. Eventually, they exit near the top of a waterfall which they jump, landing in a lake at the bottom. Booth swims to shore with the egg, only to discover that Hartley and Black are actually romantic and professional partners and Hartley was never FBI but a conman like his father, both going by the alias "Bishop". Booth surrenders the egg and they leave him handcuffed to a tree in the rainforest.
In Cairo, Hartley and Black deliver the three eggs to an Egyptian billionaire buyer, in time for his daughter's wedding (mirroring Marc Antony's original gift to Cleopatra). The gesture is overshadowed when the bride is more excited by the wedding singer Ed Sheeran. The wedding is subsequently interrupted by Das' Interpol raid. 6 months later on their yacht in Sardinia, Hartley and Black are met again by Booth who informs them that he told Das about their Cayman Islands account containing the $300 million payout from the Egyptian billionaire, which Das freezes leaving them with no money. Booth also reveals that Interpol is on their way to capture them, but offers them a chance to escape if they help him with a new heist, which requires three individuals to pull off. They agree and escape, and Das places red notices on all three of them as they begin their heist at the Louvre in Paris.
Additionally, Daniel Bernhardt has a cameo appearance as Drago Grande, and British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran makes an uncredited cameo as himself.[5]
On February 8, 2018, it was announced that major studios were fighting a bidding war for the rights to an action comedy from Dwayne Johnson and writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber. Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Sony Pictures and Paramount Pictures were all considered. The film would be produced by Beau Flynn through his Flynn Picture Company, and by Johnson, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia through their Seven Bucks Productions banner, along with Thurber's Bad Version Inc., with Wendy Jacobson executive producing.[6] The next day, it was announced that Universal and Legendary had won the bidding war.
Gadot was confirmed to star opposite Johnson on June 11, 2018,[7] and Ryan Reynolds was added on July 8, 2019.[3] Ritu Arya and Chris Diamantopoulos were also cast on February 10, 2020.[8]
Johnson was paid at least $20 million, for the first time, for the film.[9] Gadot also made $20 million for her role, making her the third highest-paid actress in the world in 2020.[10]
Principal photography began on January 3, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia.[11][12] Production on the film was previously expected to start in April 2019, after Johnson wrapped filming on Jumanji: The Next Level.[13] On July 8, 2019, filming was delayed to early 2020.[3] A planned shoot in Italy was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.[14] On March 14, it was announced production was halted indefinitely due to the pandemic.[15]
Filming resumed on September 14, 2020.[16][17] Gadot and Reynolds finished filming their parts by the end of October.[18] Production in Atlanta was completed on November 14, before moving to Rome and Sardinia, Italy for a week of shooting.[19] Filming in Italy was completed on November 18.[20] The film was greenlit with an estimated production budget of $160 million, and by the time it was released the reported cost had reached $200 million, making it the most-costly in Netflix's history.[21][1][22]
Visual effects artist Richard R. Hoover served as the overall visual effects supervisor for the film.[23]
Red Notice is one of the first feature films to extensively use the first-person view (FPV) drone flying for cinematography. FPV drone pilot Johnny Schaer participated in filming.[24]
On February 26, 2020, Steve Jablonsky was announced as the composer for Red Notice. Jablonsky previously collaborated with director Rawson Marshall Thurber scoring Skyscraper in 2018.[25] Other pieces include Sabotage by the Beastie Boys, Época by the Gotan Project, Amado Mio by Pink Martini, Downtown written by Tony Hatch, The Raider’s March by John Williams, Libertango by Astor Piazzolla, Perfect by Ed Sheeran, and Notorious B.I.G. by The Notorious B.I.G., with On the run by Naz Tokio heard throughout the closing credits.[26]
Universal originally scheduled the film for release on June 12, 2020.[27] The date was postponed by five months to November 13, 2020.[28] Netflix then took over on July 8, 2019,[3] moving the film to an unspecified date in 2021.[29] As part of a video and letter to its shareholders in April 2021, Netflix's co-chief executive officer and chief content officer, Ted Sarandos confirmed that the film would premiere sometime in Q4 2021.[30][31] The film received a limited theatrical release on November 5, 2021, prior to streaming on Netflix on November 12, 2021.[32] Reynolds requested that Welsh language subtitles were provided for the film's Netflix release.[33]
In the Philippines, the SM Mall of Asia's globe was reportedly stolen by a helicopter on November 13, 2021.[34] The Pasay city police issued a statement that the globe was not stolen and was just "undergoing maintenance for marketing strategy".[35] The globe was covered in scaffolding.[36] The mall management released a statement a day later that the globe is "back" and revealed that the supposed theft was staged as part of a publicity stunt to promote Red Notice.[37] The marketing promotion caused the globe to be a trending subject in Twitter.[36][38]
The film also saw a promotional tie-in with the professional wrestling promotion, WWE, the company where Dwayne Johnson had wrestled and became famously known as "The Rock". In addition to promoting the film during their Survivor Series event on November 21, 2021, a storyline was also played out involving one of Cleopatra's eggs that was stolen during the show.[39]
Due to the film's $200 million production budget and Netflix's global film chief Scott Stuber's statement that the company's "big-budget tentpole films [need] to draw an audience of more than 70 million viewers within the first 28 days of availability," The New York Observer estimated Red Notice would need to total around 200 million hours (about 83 million household viewers) to be deemed a success.[22] Following its first day of digital release, Reynolds announced the film had the best debut of any Netflix original film in the company's history.[40]
According to Samba TV, the film was watched by 4.2 million households in the United States, 721,000 in the United Kingdom, 332,000 in Germany, and 42,000 in Australia over its first three days of release.[2] TV Time reported that it was the second most-streamed film in the United States during its debut weekend.[41] The top 10 Netflix weekly rankings for English-language films, which relies on the recently-launched methodology of measuring a film or TV show by the number of hours it was viewed, showed that it was the most-streamed film with 148.72 million hours watched. This was the highest viewership for any movie on Netflix during its debut weekend. It was also ranked in the top 10 Netflix charts in 94 countries.[42]
In the second week of release it had a viewership of 129.11 million hours, making it the second-most-watched film on Netflix within 28 days of release.[43][44] It also remained in the top 10 Netflix rankings in 94 countries like the previous week.[45] TV Time reported that it was the most-streamed movie in the United States during the week.[46]
Though Netflix does not report theatrical box office grosses of their films, Deadline Hollywood reported the film made $1.25-$1.5 million from 750 theaters in its opening weekend.[1] By November 15, the running theatrical gross was "well north" of $2 million.[2]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 35% of 154 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Red Notice's big budget and A-list cast add up to a slickly competent action comedy whose gaudy ingredients only make the middling results more disappointing."[47] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 37 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews."[48]
Peter Debruge of Variety called the film a "fun, fast-paced and frequently amusing divertissement," and wrote, "It's all reasonably clever, so long as you don't scrutinize it too closely. Red Notice could be Thurber's spin on National Treasure, with just as much DNA from the RKO classic Gunga Din."[49] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter stated, "You can't argue with the muscular marquee value of headlining Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot in a slick, fast-paced action thriller laced with playful comedy, even if it's an empty-calorie entertainment like Red Notice."[50] Reviewing the film for the Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang wrote, "A depressing reminder of what Hollywood considers 'original' material these days, Red Notice plays one of those self-consciously convoluted, ultimately derivative long cons that strain so hard to seem breezily insouciant they wind up wearing you out. By the end, it's the clichés that warrant a rest."[51]
Beginning in August 2020, reports stated that Netflix was looking to develop a sequel to Red Notice.[52] In November 2021, Hiram Garcia announced that there are tentative plans for a sequel, stating that writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber had officially pitched a sequel and that all creatives involved were optimistic regarding its development; while announcing that Netflix had officially told them that they are interested in continuing the film series.[53] The producer later stated that the potential sequel would include the trio of stars involved in additional heists around the world, while reaffirming that its development is dependent on the reception to the first film.[54]
Dwayne Johnson celebrated the positive audience reception to Red Notice on his social media page, while stating that there is "more to come."[55][56] Following announcements that the release set the record all-time viewership for Netflix, Johnson further teased a future film announcement.[57] Thurber later stated that if a sequel is green-lit, he intends to film two sequels back-to-back.[58]
Presented content of the Wikipedia article was extracted in 2021-11-27 based on https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=59514255