Netflix's Most

Netflix's most-watched original movie is a microcosm of the worst impulses of the streamer’s blockbuster cinema.

There’s not a lot to say about Red Notice. Like many films headlined by its three main actors, Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot, it’s not so much a movie as it is an emulation of one. It flirts with the idea of jokes, and references the vast history of more accomplished cinema, but there’s no attempt to ever live up to that legacy of thrilling escapist filmmaking that inspired it. Even worse, Red Notice hinges on duplicitous art thieves getting into globe-trotting adventures, which simply follows in the footsteps of movies like To Catch a Thief or vintage James Bond movies that were oozing with sensuality. It’s like a cruel joke to have a film in that mold be headlined by one actor who can’t kiss people properly on-screen, another actor who thinks the mere mention of boobs is funny, and a leading lady who barely seems human. Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and Kathleen Turner these folks are not.

In being so hollow, Red Notice does, ironically, offer one a lot to talk about. After all, Red Notice is not some oddball mid-budget 2004 Paramount Pictures release that you occasionally see in the $5 Wal-Mart DVD bin. It’s a $200 million Netflix original blockbuster and a title that the steamer recently claimed is the most-watched movie in the history of the service (per Netflix’s peculiar methods of decoding viewership). More urgently, Red Notice is not an anomaly in the realm of Netflix original blockbusters. On the contrary, it’s a microcosm of many of the flaws that plagued the vast majority of this streamer’s biggest movies.

Starting with Bright in December 2017, Netflix has regularly dabbled in the world of $100+ million budgeted blockbusters. These productions are always star-studded affairs meant to evoke the atmosphere of traditional big-screen blockbusters of years past. Netflix, much like Disney, doesn’t launch movie stars, it merely rehashes familiar faces other artists have put in the work to make famous. These blockbusters are much like Red Notice, generically realized projects that are often reliant solely on the big names above the posters. If these productions have Jamie Foxx, Ryan Reynolds, or Will Smith in their thumbnails, that’s good enough for this streamer. Red Notice, with its three massive stars front-and-center in its narrative, is a perfect example of this.

Red Notice is also emblematic of Netflix being especially drawn to the world of espionage movies, a phenomenon reinforced by the company investing hundreds of millions of dollars in other projects into failed Netflix franchises like 6 Underground, The Gray Man, and Heart of Stone. Part of this is done out of necessity since the default blockbuster mold for theatrical studios in the late 2010s was superhero films. Features about spies that don’t have superpowers, on paper, seem like a decent idea for a market Netflix could corner. However, the lack of distinct visual aesthetics or tones between these projects has made it difficult to ascertain what makes any of these movies different from one another. Try and get a normal human to discern differences in random images from The Gray Man and Extraction 2 and that person will tell you that they’re the same picture.

The infamous subpar visual effects in Red Notice, particularly the use of a CGI bull for a big set piece, are emblematic of another flaw that permeates so much Netflix blockbuster cinema. Because these movies aren’t designed from the ground up to be appealing enough to inspire people to leave their homes and go to the theater, their visuals look especially lackluster. After all, if they don’t have to have these visual effects stand up to scrutiny on an IMAX screen, why put in the effort? That doesn’t mean every theatrical movie has flawless CGI or cinematography, but it’s also hard to imagine recent gorgeous theatrical tentpoles like Barbie and Oppenheimer ever existing on Netflix. The visual demands of this platform call for drab gray action scenes that won’t distract people while they fold laundry. As a result, all the splendor blockbuster cinema is supposed to provide is removed from the equation.

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Then there’s the fact that Netflix’s cinema is based on algorithms and trying to give people more of what they’ve liked. This informs why so much of Netflix’s blockbuster cinema is as unremarkable as Red Notice. Blockbuster movies have often been about placating moviegoers with reminders of past films they enjoyed. However, you could also get stuff like Jurassic Park or Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl that delivered genuinely thrilling material that moviegoers never realized they wanted or needed. Netflix blockbusters can never take those kinds of risks. They’re doomed to just regurgitate the beats of Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds movies people liked in the past.

Perhaps the greatest way Red Notice reflects problematic elements of Netflix blockbusters is the way it vanished after it dropped on the service in November 2021. In the world of theatrical entertainment, even box-office bombs like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping can take on lengthy vibrant lives in the years that come since they’re available on TV and various home media formats. Red Notice and other Netflix blockbusters are permanently trapped behind a paywall, doomed to never get a home video release. As a result, these movies haven’t been able to take on a life of their own with audiences. They’re just disposed of as quickly as they came to make way for the next piece of pricey content. There is no lifespan for Netflix blockbusters, just buzzy press releases announcing the big stars who’ve signed onto the feature and thumbnails you occasionally see while scrolling through the service.

It's hard to weep for such an obscure fate for a movie as generic as Red Notice. However, the faults within this feature's release and the piece of art itself are not an anomaly. This production speaks loudly to the problems that keep plaguing Netflix’s attempts to get in on the blockbuster game. No wonder titles like The Gray Man have already become footnotes in history, while Heart of Stone (which is only a few weeks old as of this writing) may as well have been released alongside the works of the Lumiere Brothers given how ancient it feels. Netflix can crow all it wants about how Red Notice is “the most-watched Netflix movie ever” by its own bizarre metrics. This Rawson Marshall Thurber directorial effort from 2021 is still a poster child for grave flaws weighing down the most expensive Netflix original movies.

Lisa Laman is a life-long movie fan, writer, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic. In addition to her Features writing for Collider, her byline has been seen in outlets like Polygon, The Mary Sue, Fangoria, The Spool, and ScarleTeen. She has also presented original essays related to the world of cinema and pop culture at multiple academic conferences. Lisa's favorite kind of movies are anything that gets her soul stirred and her mind racing, though she does have a special fondness for musicals and anything anchored by lesbians. Residing both on the Autism spectrum and in Texas, Lisa is a lady who adores pugs, showtunes, the Wes Anderson movie Fantastic Mr. Fox, and any music by Carly Rae Jepsen.