The glaring product placement in the Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson Netflix movie Red Notice highlights why it failed as a narrative. The film is certainly a success in terms of viewership, breaking streaming records to become Netflix’s biggest debut to date. Red Notice was reportedly viewed in 4.2 million households in its first weekend, demolishing the 1.7 million brought in by Disney+’s Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings. However, while Red Notice may have succeeded in finding its audience, Netflix’s transparent and self-serving intentions for the film prevented the story from being all that it could have been.
Red Notice is Netflix’s most expensive project to date, reportedly costing upwards of $200 million to produce. The film centers around Special Agent John Hartley (played by Johnson), a high-ranking FBI profiler who recruits the help of international art thief Nolan Booth (played by Reynolds) in order to thwart a high-stakes heist orchestrated by The Bishop (played by Gal Gadot). Red Notice takes advantage of the chemistry Reynolds and Johnson established in Hobbs and Shaw, with their relationship supplying most of the film’s comedic beats. Red Notice is Netflix’s first true-to-form blockbuster, with all of the makings of a large-scale theatrical release, and that’s exactly the problem.
The underwhelming plot of Red Notice leaves many questions unanswered (which is not uncommon in blockbusters such as this), but making a cohesive movie does not seem to have been of the utmost importance to Netflix. The film contains product placement for companies owned by both Reynolds and Johnson. Aviation Gin, the liquor company owned by Reynolds since 2018, and Teremana Tequila, the liquor company founded by Johnson in 2020, both make brief appearances in the film. They aren’t paid an overwhelming amount of attention, but the bottles are certainly rather noticeable. Although the cameos from the actors’ respective brands are themselves somewhat inoffensive, they suggest that Netflix’s intentions for Red Notice were to advertise rather than entertain.
Netflix's Red Notice was released on November 12th, the same day that Disney+ unveiled a slew of their platform’s upcoming projects. This may be a coincidence, but it at the very least worked well with Netflix’s plan to drive attention to their platform. Reynolds and Johnson are perhaps the most marketable faces in Hollywood, each capable of saving franchises (Deadpool and The Fast Saga respectively) with nothing but their charm. Putting the two of them front and center effectively ensure the film’s success, regardless of the quality of the story. The two actors get big payouts on top of the opportunity to promote their brands, and Netflix gets scores of new subscribers in exchange.
Without Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson, the film would’ve been a disaster. The characters in Red Notice are rather one-dimensional and the story is bland and unoriginal, but the quality was never of significant importance. With two of Hollywood’s most reliable crowd-pleasers at its helm, Red Notice was little more than Netflix’s attempt to prove itself capable of producing blockbuster-sized content as a way to garner more subscribers, a goal which it seems to have accomplished.