BBC 14 NOV 2021- Early on in the Netflix thriller “Red Notice,” Interpol Inspector Urvashi Das (Ritu Arya) holds up one of the film’s three fabled eggs of Cleopatra and calls it a “priceless piece of ancient cultural whatnot.” She then throws it to the ground, shattering it. It’s not a real egg, but a fake substitute — as you’d expect, since you’re watching a movie, in which all the priceless valuables are props.
Con men, art dealers and movies are all obsessed with lies and truth and the space between the two. Rawson Marshall Thurber’s clever script is a shell game of plot twists and head fakes which keeps daring you to notice, or care, that you’re watching a scam, a forgery and a fiction. It’s a shallow pleasure — but what can you expect from an art form that is constantly passing off plaster as gold?
“Red Notice” starts with FBI profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) pursuing art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) as he tries to steal three ancient Egyptian eggs supposedly given to Cleopatra. Hartley and Booth are both being targeted by another art thief, The Bishop (Gal Gadot), who through cleverer-than-thou machinations gets them sent to an Interpol black site.
The narrative tangles and re-tangles from there, racing through masked balls, South American jungles, improbable bullfights, and various betrayals. Imposter eggs and imposter backstories proliferate, and everyone turns out to be someone other than who you thought they were.
