Carry-On (2024)
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12-month trend
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2025-09 to 2026-08
A TSA officer must navigate a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse when he is blackmailed into allowing a dangerous substance onto a flight.
The story
On Christmas Eve, Ethan Kopek, a cynical TSA officer at LAX, is pressured by his pregnant girlfriend to pursue his dreams. Instead, he seeks a routine assignment in a baggage-scanning lane. During his shift, he is contacted via an earpiece by a ruthless mercenary known as the Traveler. The mercenary demands that Ethan allow a specific carry-on case to pass through security, threatening to kill Ethan's girlfriend if he refuses. As Ethan struggles to navigate the threat while being monitored by the Traveler's accomplice, he must find a way to stop the plot without alerting the conspirators or compromising the safety of the passengers.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
Ethan Kopek, a cynical TSA officer at LAX, is blackmailed by a mercenary called the Traveler to allow a carry-on case containing Novichok, a lethal nerve agent, onto a flight. The Traveler's accomplice, the Watcher, monitors Ethan's actions. Ethan manages to alert a local officer, but the officer is poisoned. To stall for time, Ethan creates a distraction to remove a colleague from his station. He eventually allows a man named Mateo Flores to pass through with the case. Meanwhile, an LAPD detective, Elena Cole, investigates a related crime and identifies the threat. During a confrontation in a restroom, Ethan faces the Traveler and eventually manages to get Mateo to reveal he is also being coerced. After a series of tense exchanges, Ethan manages to switch the bomb into a larger suitcase in the cargo hold. He infiltrates the hold to disarm it while the plane is in flight. He eventually traps the Traveler in an airtight refrigeration unit, and the plane lands safely. One year later, Ethan is a police officer and is on a trip to Tahiti with his family.
- First release year
- 2024
- Runtime (minutes)
- 119
- Production countries
- United States
- Original languages
- English
- Directors
- Jaume Collet-Serra
- Writers
- T. J. Fixman · writer
- Cast and characters
- Taron Egerton · Ethan Kopek; Sofia Carson; Danielle Deadwyler; Theo Rossi; Logan Marshall-Green; Jason Bateman · the Traveler
- Genres
- action; thriller
- Tone and mood
- tense; high-stakes
- Setting
- Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) during Christmas Eve.
- Premise and plot tags
- bioterrorism; airport security
- Reception
- The film received positive reviews from critics and was highly successful on Netflix, becoming one of the most-watched films on the platform in 2024.
- Reported review scores
- Collider · score: 7 · scale: 10; Punch Drunk Critics · score: 3.5 · scale: 5
- Production trivia
- The film was intended to be an illustration of the trolley problem.; The script was originally planned to be the first film from a deal between Amblin Partners and Netflix.; While set at LAX, most interior scenes were filmed at the decommissioned terminal of Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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