





Warning: Major spoilers for Red Notice ahead.
Red Notice is actually two movies. There’s the superficial narrative, the one you watch unfold upon first viewing, but lurking closely underneath is a second story, invisible to viewers until the very end, when the twist reveals it. That means that certain scenes take on a very different meaning upon second viewing, and Dwayne Johnson has one he wants you to pay special attention to.
“One moment in particular that really stands out would be the dance sequence between me and Gal Gadot,” he tells us.
The sequence takes place roughly halfway through the movie, once FBI profiler John Hartley (Johnson) has officially agreed to partner up with con artist Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) to bring down notorious art thief The Bishop (Gadot). To do so, Booth and Hartley travel to Valencia, Spain, with the intention to steal one of Cleopatra’s golden eggs (an item also coveted by The Bishop) from arms dealer Sotto Voce (Chris Diamantopoulos), during the latter’s annual masquerade ball. On the dance floor, Hartley comes face to face with the Bishop, and the two share a tumultuous tango, full of double entendres.

“What made it uniquely fun is that, upon the second, third and fourth viewing of Red Notice, when you go back to the dance sequence, that’s when you’ll catch nuances,” Johnson says. “We did the dance knowing that there [were] actually two sides to every movement. There was the A-side that you see when you first see the movie, before you see the twist, and then the B-side, when you watch it back and [get] what that dance actually means. A little bit of psychological chess there.”
The twist he’s referring to is the fact that Hartley is actually a con man working with the Bishop the whole time. Not only that — the two are also romantically involved, making good on all the flirty banter of that dance scene. Writer and director Rawson Marshall Thurber came up with the idea for Red Notice’s twist very early on, and told us that it’s been a joy to watch audiences react.
“What’s been so rewarding and so fun is that anytime I would pitch the story to anybody, they wouldn’t see that coming,” he says. “It makes you rewatch the movie, and rethink about the movie. If you go back, we try to play it cards up the whole way through.”

























































































