Ryan Reynolds’s art thief a scream in Red Notice

I can’t think of anyone who makes me laugh as much as this actor. And his banter with The Rock in Red Notice is first-class.

Ryan Reynolds as Nolan Booth and Dwayne Johnson as John Hartley in Red Notice. Picture: Frank Masi/Netflix

Red Notice (M)
Cinemas and Netflix
★★★½

What do you get when you put Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds in the same room? I can imagine Reynolds answering, “About $40m and the coins they paid me.”

That would be funny, not least because it’s untrue. As such it fits what you do get with this trio: a room full of frivolity.

The three each received a rumoured $US20m to star in Red Notice. The pay off is a highly enjoyable crime comedy.

The title comes from a “most wanted” arrest warrant issued by Interpol. The three main characters are the world’s best art thief (Gadot), the world’s second best art thief (Reynolds), though he disputes this ranking, and the FBI profiler (Johnson) who wants to catch them.

Well, that’s who they are when we meet them. This jaunty 117-minute movie has twist upon twist upon twist. “I lied to you, I lied to her … I lied to baby Jesus,” admits the second best art thief at one point. It’s not a bad summary.

Red Notice is written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who has a flair for snappy dialogue. It’s his third film with Johnson, following the 2016 action comedy Central Intelligence and the 2018 adventure thriller Skyscraper.

The art thieves are after three bejewelled eggs said to have been owned by Cleopatra. There’s an Egyptian billionaire who will pay $US300m for the set, which he wants to make his daughter’s wedding present.

The movie opens with the first one being stolen from a museum in London. The second one is known to be owned by a psychotic arms dealer quietly named Sotto Voce (Chris Diamanopoulos). The third one is whereabouts unknown, though art thief No.2 thinks he knows where it is.

The action moves between Cairo, London, Rome, Bali, Russia and Valencia as art thief No.2 and the FBI profiler form a “marriage of convenience” to prevent art thief No.1 from putting all the eggs in her basket. The trio is pursued by an Interpol agent (Ritu Arya), who thinks they are all crooks.

There are wonderful set pieces including time spent in a modern Russian gulag, an interrogation during which Gadot delivers electric shocks to The Rock’s nether region while singing Downtown and a threesome fight scene where Gadot shows her Wonder Woman side.

A sense of humour is a personal thing. What tickles one person’s fancy may leave another’s untickled. For mine, Reynolds is one of the best comic actors working today.

He’s more straight man funny than slapstick funny, though he can do the latter. I can’t think of anyone who makes me laugh as much, mainly through what he says and how he says it. Perhaps Martin Short, so humorous in the recent TV series Only Murders in the Building.

Here he is on first meeting the FBI profiler, who is wearing a tan leather jacket. “That jacket. It’s a statement piece. Somewhere there’s a very nude cow whispering, ‘Worth it’.”

When the FBI profiler asks him, “Do you know what I think is funny?”, his immediate, serious reply is, “Vin Diesel’s audition tape for Cats? It exists.” Look, too, for the moment the two are face-to-horn with a bull in a bullring and have an argument about the Attenborough brothers.

The back-and-forth between Johnson and Reynolds is wonderfully natural. They might be brothers who have annoyed each other since childhood. Gadot, too, is terrific. It’s great to see her out of the Wonder Woman costume and in … Reynolds would say a bikini, but I’ll leave that to him.

I watched this 117-minute movie on a rainy afternoon and it was just about perfect for the time and place. The final scene suggests a sequel. We see the Louvre and think of the Mona Lisa. I hope it happens.

-

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (M)
Cinemas and Amazon Prime
★★★½

If you want a good example of Benedict Cumberbatch’s versatility as an actor, watch Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, set in Montana in the 1920s, and then The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, set in England from 1881 to the late 1920s.

In each film Cumberbatch’s character is an odd man out. Yet the inner conflict of the spur-jangling Phil Burbank and the cat lover Louis Wain manifests in dramatically different ways.

One is a dust-bitten, uncompromising rancher; the other a scatterbrained, uncompromising artist. Each has an inner life, though one hides it. Each has secrets, dating back to childhood.

Cumberbatch delivers a powerhouse performance in Campion’s film, from first frame to last. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is a patchier film, but there are moments where he is simply remarkable to watch.

Look for the scene where he’s alone in a cabin on an ocean liner and relives his childhood nightmare, or the one where he and his ailing wife talk about the mingling of the past, present, future and the nature of beauty.

This 112-minute film, directed and co-written by Will Sharpe, an alumnus of the Royal Shakespeare Company (The Tempest becomes important at one point), is a biographical drama-romance-comedy.

Louis Wain (Cumberbatch) was an English illustrator who became famous, for a while, for his drawings of anthropomorphic cats.

The story opens in 1881. Wain’s father has been dead for 18 months, meaning the “oldest and malest” child has had to support his mother and five sisters, two of whom are of marriageable age. He does this by doing drawings for anyone who will pay for them.

He is fascinated by electricity, but not in the way Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were (for that, see the 2017 film The Current War, in which, as it happens, Cumberbatch is Edison).

He sees electricity as having a fundamental connection to human (and feline) life, one that is not yet fully explained.

There is occasional narration. I don’t think it’s needed – the actors and the camera show us Wain’s mind is a “dark, screaming hurricane of crippling anxieties” – but as it’s by Oscar winner Olivia Coleman it’s not a deal-breaker.

It is the narrator who makes the best electrical joke. Wain, self-conscious about his hare lip, is innocent of romantic life, until he meets the new governess, Emily Richardson (a winning Claire Foy from The Crown), and feels a “tingling in his loins”.

They fall in love, adopt a kitten and live quietly. Their scenes together are a beautiful reminder that sometimes the small, day-to-day things in life are beyond any measurable value.

Wain receives another break when Sir William Ingram (the ever reliable Toby Jones), editor of the Illustrated London News, agrees to publish a two-page spread of his cat drawings.

At a time when cats are considered pests rather than pets, Wain’s illustrations shift public opinion and as a result “change the world for the better”.

That quote comes from the writer HG Wells, who supports Wain during his lowest moments. He is played by the Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave, one of two surprise cameos in this film.

I’d call it a walk-on role except Wells is seated the entire time, perhaps to minimise the fact Cave is an old-fashioned foot taller that the author of War of the Worlds.

The other cameo is by the New Zealand film director Taika Waititi, who has a habit of popping up in the most unexpected places.

This engaging film is a mix of romance – for people, cats, life and the world in general – and class/social/psychological drama, with a fair bit of comedy thrown in.

All the performances are strong, but it’s Cumberbatch, moving from youth to age, from bright eccentricity to something more sunless than that, who holds it all together. “Why were you throwing peanuts at a bull?” Sir William asks him after one drawing commission leads to a mishap at a country fair. The man with the chaotic mind has an answer.

Louis Wain (Benedict Cumberbatch, right) is innocent of romantic life until he meets the new governess, Emily Richardson (Claire Foy, left), and feels a “tingling in his loins”. Picture: Jaap Buitendijk