RED ONE (2024)
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, JK Simmons, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Kristofer Hivju, Nick Kroll, Wesley Kimmel, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Marc Evan Jackson, Jenna Kanell, Clayton Cooper, Lanz Duffy, Makana David, Samantha Benson, Ashleigh Domangue, Cody Easterbrook, Nikki Garza, Abel Arias and the voice of Reinaldo Faberlle.
Screenplay by Chris Morgan.
Directed by Jake Kasdan.
Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. 123 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Once upon a time, in the movies, Santa Claus was just a hefty, jolly, bearded guy in a red and white suit who went about doing good deeds and distributing toys and was a good friend to reindeer. Somewhere along the line, though – probably about the time of How the Grinch Stole Christmas in the 1966 TV special – Hollywood decided to make him darker. However, the Grinch wasn’t really Santa, he was a bad guy who was masquerading as the St. Nick.
The real dark quirky times probably started early in the millennium with the Billy Bob Thornton starrer Bad Santa. But, again, this wasn’t the real Santa, it was just an alcoholic con artist running a scam as a mall Santa.
Soon enough the movies started making the questionable choices and ethics about the real Santa, though, and Christmas movies are just turning into genre pastiches. Forget peace, goodwill and joy to the world. Even the commercial aspects of the holiday, like presents, are now just getting cursory glances.
Just last year, Santa was portrayed as a dirty, homeless alcoholic who was more than willing to savagely mow through some naughty criminals in Violent Night. Now, less than a year after slasher Santa, why not make him a ripped and unpredictable action star, and slip him into a film that seems like an unholy merge of Fast and Furious, a particularly obnoxious mythological Marvel movie and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians?
Which brings us to Red One.
Now, actually, Santa is not in a huge chunk of Red One, because the film is about Santa being kidnapped just days before Christmas. This is actually a real shame, because casting JK Simmons as Santa is by far the smartest decision made in this film, even if they play up some of the wrong things about the character. Simmons has an enviable physique for a man of his age, but showing how buff Santa is goes in direct contradiction of holiday lore. Still, Simmons is the best thing in Red One, and when he is not on screen the film suffers for it.
So, if this film is only tangentially about Santa, what is it about? Well, mostly a mish mash of vague holiday ideas pureed through tired action tropes that have been done better – and made much more sense – in many other movies.
In the world of Red One, the North Pole and the toy factory are like a military operation, full of regulations, cutting edge technology, and a strange amount of odd alien creatures. (Walking talking grizzly bears, for example, or elves which look like undercooked versions of Harry Potter’s Dobby. Even the half-brother of Santa is an evil looking goat troll.)
The real stars here, though, are Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, both slumming for a relatively easy paycheck.
Johnson plays Cal, Santa’s stone-faced head bodyguard, the leader of Enforcement Logistics and Fortification (E.L.F., get it? Okay, it isn’t funny.) He has just decided to retire from his job after hundreds of years, because of course he did. Getting ready for his final trip, he is thrown into saving Santa (code name: Red One) from an evil Icelandic shape-shifting witch (Kiernan Shipka, taking advantage of her witch experience from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) who is determined to take over the holiday and punish everyone on the naughty list.
Evans is Jack, a “level four naughty lister,” who we are introduced to in a prologue where when he was a child, he was charging his cousins for what he called proof that Santa wasn’t real. He has grown up to be an alcoholic, gambling, thieving deadbeat dad who also just happens to be the greatest hacker on the dark web.
When one of his hacks shows the kidnappers how to find Santa, Jack is hunted down by M.O.R.A., the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority (lots of weird agencies in this movie). In fact, they do it surprisingly easily considering he is supposed to be an impossible-to-identify specter on the dark web. Jack is forced to help find the big guy with them, taken on a whirlwind tour of tropical islands with killer snowmen, a medieval castle that seems to have been populated by the random alien characters from the Star Wars cantina band sequence, and several other supposedly life-threatening experiences.
Not surprisingly, Cal and Jack, who are immediately antagonistic, grow a grudging respect for each other. And then, completely out of the blue, the film drops a completely gratuitous speech about love, family and the holiday spirit, because they suddenly remembered this was supposed to be a Christmas movie.
I’m not sure who this film is supposed to be for. It is too violent and has too much foul language for kids but is too ridiculous and disjointed for adults. But perhaps that is the answer. Maybe Red One is for no one.
Put Red One on the naughty list and leave a lump of coal in its stocking.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 14, 2024.
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