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As I mentioned last week in my review of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, I don’t regularly watch holiday movies—new or old—during the holiday season. I might sneak one in here and there, but it’s just not my bag. But with a stacked cast like the one in Red One, I had to make an exception…only to find out that this ultra-cynical, gloomy, PG-13 action movie isn’t really a Christmas movie at all. It’s a deconstruction of the traditions of the holiday season molded into a globe-trotting spy thriller, and it’s fairly abysmal.
Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons, having spent a lot of time in the gym) is gearing up for his annual run with his North Pole Head of Security, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), by his side. But Callum has grown weary of seeing the Naughty List get longer every year, with this year being the first time in history in which the Naughty List outnumbers the Good List. So, he’s decided to retire after this upcoming flight. He and Santa have become close, but Code Name: Red One understands Callum's decision. The film spends a lot of these early scenes explaining how Santa manages to cover the whole world in one night, and even shows how he gets in all of those small chimneys (he basically uses Ant-Man’s shrinking technology). It’s kind of cute and clever, explaining these magical occurrences in real-world terms.
When Santa gets kidnapped by a villainous group led by a witch named Gryla (Kieran Shipka) for reasons too stupid to explain, it’s up to Callum, backed by Zoe (Lucy Liu), the head of the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority, a military group that protects secret people and places, to get him back. They trace the way the enemy found the North Pole in the first place to a resourceful but troublemaking bounty hunter and hacker named Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), who has grown estranged from his son, Dylan (Wesley Kimmel), since he broke up with his ex-wife. It’s all an unnecessarily complicated mess, but the bottom line is that Callum needs Jack to find his missing boss, and the two use all the powers that ELF (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification) has to save Christmas, which includes side-trips to visit Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) and a full-on battle against evil snowmen.
Directed by Jake Kasdan (Bad Teacher, Walk Hard, Sex Tape) and written by Chris Morgan, Red One is a little too rough around the edges for little kids, thanks to a litany of bad language, some low-grade violence, and some scary images of Santa getting tortured. And while the film’s ultimate goal is to instill or restore a bit of the Christmas spirit into both Callum and Jack, most of the film is just dark, ugly, and mean-spirited about both mythological beings and humans. Right now, I don’t need another reminder that humans can suck a whole bunch, especially in a Christmas movie.
Neither Johnson nor Evans seems especially happy to be in this. In fact, the only players who seem to be having any fun are Simmons, who is barely in the movie, and Shipka, who’s at least trying something different and more energized than those around her. On the plus side, Bonnie Hunt plays Mrs. Claus like she was born to do so. For all of the action and special effects (the film does appear to have cost a great deal of money), this one is about as exciting as a reindeer fart in the wind.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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