Red One
This season, Dwayne Johnson delivers the Christmas present you really don’t want: a cynical, sentimental and over-baked action-fantasy.
A frosty reception
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
Things are not looking good. Santa’s bodyguard has handed in his notice (after 542 years in the job), there are more children on the naughty list than ever before and Christmas is behind schedule. Then, when matters could hardly get worse, Santa Claus goes missing.
The Christmas film is a curious beast. With a limited window in which to attract audiences, it must cram in as much festive good cheer and novelty to draw the crowds before the New Year festivities kick in. From a commercial standpoint, the reprehensible Terrifier 3 pulled off a double whammy by attracting the Halloween crowd with a sheen of Christmas glitter.
However, Jake Kasdan’s Red One attempts to have its Christmas cake and eat it by cynically acknowledging the consumer exploitation of the season while injecting its own note of a spirit of good will. “We choose every day who we want to be,” moralises Callum Drift, the North Pole’s head of security, while also noting: “I love the kids – it’s the grown-ups who kill me.” That pretty much sums up the tenor of the film, although the kids are having a hard time in believing in Santa (code name: Red One).
According to on-set reports, Dwayne Johnson – who plays Callum Drift – flouted the spirit of Christmas himself by consistently turning up late on set, allegedly increasing the budget by $50 million, on top of his $30m fee. And with a budget of $250m, the movie makes sure it doesn’t miss a trick by hurling every Christmas ingredient into its over-cooked stew, from a talking polar bear to killer snowmen. For good measure, there’s a bunch of less familiar figures as well, from Santa’s grotesque brother Krampus to the Winter Witch Gryla, and all sorts of shape-shifters. It’s all a bit much, leaving the viewer with the same feeling of having over-indulged on a seven-course meal on Christmas day. The over reliance of CGI is another downside, where the mash-up of fantasy, mythology and technology precludes any sense of real peril or concern for the characters. All Callum has to do is “adjust the reality” of something, or walk through a hidden portal, and he is one step ahead of the enemy.
J.K. Simmons comes off best as a surprisingly muscular Old Saint Nick, whose sleigh is a high-powered vehicle powered by eight computer-animated reindeer, which have twenty-four hours to deliver several billion presents across the planet (thanks to the miracles of magic and advanced technology). However, when an intercontinental seismic surveillance system locates Santa’s secret layer, darker forces move in…
For good measure, a mismatched buddy movie is squeezed into the mix when the services of a super-hacker (and lousy dad) is called on to aid the search for Santa. He is one Jack ‘The Wolf’ O’Malley (Chris Evans), the sort of irredeemable creep who literally steals candy from a child and starts a fire in a public park to act as a diversion for his own nefarious ends. He’s the sort of character Ryan Reynolds could have employed to fine comic effect, but is rather lost on Evans, who is used primarily as a sounding board for Dwayne’s Johnson’s bland one-liners. There are fleeting moments that work, but the haphazard logic of the movie, the excessive music and the pile-up of the implausible and the ridiculous render the whole affair indigestible.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, J.K. Simmons, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Kristofer Hivju, Nick Kroll, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Wesley Kimmel, Marc Evan Jackson.
Dir Jake Kasdan, Pro Hiram Garcia, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Chris Morgan, Jake Kasdan and Melvin Mar, Screenplay Chris Morgan, Ph Dan Mindel, Pro Des Bill Brzeski, Ed Mark Helfrich, Steve Edwards and Tara Timpone, Music Henry Jackman, Costumes Michael Crow, Sound Ken McGill.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Seven Bucks Productions/Chris Morgan Productions/The Detective Agency-Warner Bros.
123 mins. USA. 2024. UK Rel: 6 November 2024. US Rel: 15 November 2024. Cert. 12A.
