I mean no disrespect to other movies that are in production. I am very excited about John Wick 3 and it’s ever-growing cast that now features Halle Berry and at least two more dogs. I can’t wait to see the follow-up to Infinity War, for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because I need to know if my large muscular space son Drax is okay. There are multiple Fast & Furious and Fast & Furious-adjacent movies on the horizon, one of which is a spinoff starring The Rock and Jason Statham that is so powerful it almost tore the franchise in two. I want all of these in my eyes and brain at once. But right now, today, on paper, Red Notice is the only movie that matters to me.
Part of the reason Red Notice is so exciting is that we know so little about it. There’s a good reason for that: The movie is still in pre-production and does not come out until 2020. But let’s check in with what we do know, because there are some words in here I can’t wait to paste into this text box. First, from the Hollywood Reporter:
Rawson Marshall Thurber, who directed [Dwayne “The Rock”] Johnson in Central Intelligence and the upcoming Skyscraper, is behind the movie that will see the actor star as an Interpol agent who is after the most wanted art thief in the world.
The Rock is chasing the most wanted art thief in the world. We can work with this. But let’s keep going. From Deadline:
The film’s logline is being kept under wraps, but it is described as a globe-trotting, action-comedy, heist thriller designed as a three-hander between Johnson, [Gal] Gadot and another male star who’ll soon be set. Gadot plays a brilliant and mysterious figure in the art world.
The Rock and Gal Gadot are starring in a heist movie. I have four thoughts about this, maybe five. Definitely five.
Thought number one: If we assume Gal Gadot is playing the art thief, then this reads like a kind of gender-swapped Thomas Crown Affair, with The Rock as Rene Russo and Gal Gadot as Pierce Brosnan. And if we assume Gal Gadot’s “brilliant and mysterious” art world figure is brought in to assist The Rock in tracking the as-yet-uncast thief, then it’s like The Thomas Crown Affair but with The Rock as Denis Leary and Gal Gadot as Rene Russo. I know the style and tone will be much different, in part because The Rock and Gadot are A-list action stars and in part because it’s described as an action-comedy in that blockquote, but I really wanted to type “with The Rock as Rene Russo.”
Thought number two: This will be the second heist movie that The Rock and Gal Gadot have made together, with the first being Fast Five. Fast Five was a heist movie. It was easy to get distracted by the speeding neon cars and the manhunt aspect of it all, but the climax of the movie featured an elaborate plan to steal a safe filled with millions of dollars that Ludacris figured out how to crack using a handprint the bad guy left on Gal Gadot’s bathing suit. That’s a heist.
Thought number three: The Rock is at his best when he is hunting people down. We saw it in the aforementioned Fast Five, in which he and his disquietingly muscular neck flew to Brazil to track down Vin Diesel and the rest of the Family, and we saw it years earlier in The Rundown, which I maintain to this day was The Rock’s best movie. I do not know how The Rock ends up as an Interpol agent in Red Notice and I very much do not care. I’m kind of shocked it took this long for it to happen, to be honest. The Rock is an Interpol agent now. Hell yeah.
Thought number four: This is admittedly less of a “thought” than it is a “I’m just going to show you what The Rock posted on Instagram,” but I think I’ve earned a little leeway here.
Which brings us to…
Thought number five: Who is the third person in this movie? Because I have some ideas. Boy howdy, do I ever have some ideas. Options include:
- Jason Statham, if you want to build off of the chemistry he and The Rock already developed, and if you’ve seen Spy and know that Comedy Statham is a force more powerful than a swift kick to the sternum from Jason Statham
- Pierce Brosnan, because what the hell kind of heist movie doesn’t feature Pierce Brosnan in one of the main roles, and yes I’ve seen After the Sunset at least five times on cable, leave me alone
- Keanu Reeves, because I’m allowed to dream
- Paul Giamatti, both because I want to see The Rock and Paul Giamatti on screen together and because it would be so great if Giamatti was the art thief and The Rock and Gal Gadot spent two hours trying to thwart him after he stole the Mona Lisa or something
And so on. Really, almost anyone works. And I know this could go south before it all comes together. In this way, the absence of information is a blessing because it lets me fill in all the blanks with my wildest dreams. I will say this, though: It’s hard to start from a better place than “The Rock and Gal Gadot are starring in a movie about a billion-dollar art heist.” Let’s all just agree to take this win now and worry about the details later.
