It’s surprising Gal Gadot doesn’t break into a rendition of Zara Zara Touch Me at any time in Red Notice, given the amount of double-crossing, strange teaming up, scheming, and backstabbing going on. Because that’s exactly what it seems like: a Hollywoodized version of any Race film, done on a budget that dwarfs what the entire Bollywood industry is expected to generate this year.

Rawson Red Notice by Marshall Thurber is as ridiculous as they come. It’s a two-hour test of how far and how far back one can roll their eyes, based solely on the star power of Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, and Dwayne Johnson.

Dwayne Johnson plays FBI agent John Hartley, who looks more like Hobbs from Fast and Furious than Maui from Moana. He’s on a mission to apprehend two art smugglers. Ryan is Nolan Booth, thief #1, and he portrays the character as his normal, unmasked Deadpool persona. Last month, I was already over this wise-cracking character, and Free Guy and Nolan Booth didn’t help matters.

Gal Gadot’s very pretentiously called Bishop is Thief #2. Gal never manages to look even remotely dangerous or intimidating when delivering roundhouse kicks and administering shock therapy to buff males.

Red Notice was never intended to be a test of any of these people’s acting ability, but it’s certainly eye-opening to see who we’ve chosen as the world’s top movie stars.

In Red Notice, this triumvirate’s mission is to acquire set pieces for Gal’s impending Cleopatra film. Some are doing it to clear their names, while others are doing it for financial gain, plainly in contrast to Netflix, which has spent so much money on this film while never bothering to recruit better writers at a fraction of the cost.

The plot is as flimsy as they come. After every 20 minutes, new, lazy twists are dreamed up just when Ryan’s gibberish can no longer sustain the film. Tragic backstories about absentee fathers are crammed in, but they have little impact. You can’t help but anticipate it all to conclude with another dumb ‘gotcha’ joke as Ryan sits in bed, looking forlorn and remembering how his father abandoned him for a watch. We can’t say we blame ourselves if we don’t trust the boy who cried wolf.

Returning to the large budget, Netflix should be audited to see where it all went. The plot leads our cop-thief duo to a bullfighting arena, where the bull and the rest of the CGI set seem absurdly artificial. They then ride a train through more phony CGI landscapes, with a few action sequences requiring at least another week of processing. The entire film has a studio-produced vibe to it. Argentina, depicted by a few plants and a small waterfall, is where the heroes’ journeys take them. The action is nearly always indoors, with Rome, Bali, and a dozen other cities flashing in huge red fonts.

Red Notice has few options for saving itself now that stars and size aren’t working in its favour. Despite the history, mythologies, and treasure hunts it references, this is neither a National Treasure nor Da Vinci Code. Even a History Channel programme on Cleopatra’s artefacts and Nazi loot might be fascinating, but Rawson takes it a step further. Marshall Thurber is too preoccupied with making Gal and Dwayne dance the seductive waltz to notice the heart of his film.

I’ve often wondered if everyone involved in the joke is genuinely in on it. Ryan Reynolds advises Dwayne Johnson to seek for the treasure in a lost bunker, saying it would be marked with the words MacGuffin.