RED ONE - Mark Reviews Movies

Red One, Amazon MGM Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 14, 2024

The idea of Santa Claus should elicit at least a bit of wonder. While the Santa of Red One might be magical, the concept of the character feels almost too practical to amaze in any way. The guy may travel around on a sleigh drawn by eight massive reindeer, but after making an impromptu appearance at a mall in Philadelphia, this Santa has a convoy of SUVs to return him to the military base where his sled is parked. The return trip to the North Pole receives an escort of fighter jets, too.

There's something inherently dull in this conceit of how Santa's operations work, and that's not even mentioning the drab, underlit look director Jake Kasdan brings to the not-so-big guy's headquarters and his efforts to ensure that children around the world have stockings stuffed and presents under the tree on Christmas morning. The visual effects here are generally terrible, and honestly, that might have been more forgivable, if not for the fact that the filmmakers try to hide them in darkness.

One can ignore or even accept poor special effects, as long as there's some imagination accompanying them. Instead, Kasdan makes his big, effects-laden setpieces look so dreary and cut to such hasty shreds that the imagining is left to us—to figure out what any of these things is supposed to look like. Even that method of cheating the effects is one of practicality. The movie can't escape it, because there's barely a bit of creativity in its plot, characters, or vision of what Santa's work could entail.

The plot, at least, does feel like something from a cheap B-movie of a bygone era. In it, old St. Nick (J.K. Simmons) is abducted by a villain, who wants to use Santa's intrinsic magical abilities to do the one thing the old man has never done: to punish everyone on the Naughty List. There are more and more kids and, presumably, adults appearing that list every year, bemoans Santa's head of security Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), who finally reaches his limit when there are more people on the bad list this year than the good one.

Callum, who's not technically an elf (although he can shrink) but is part of the elite task force called ELF that protects Santa (and counts trolls, a polar bear, and Lucy Liu's Zoe on its staff), offers his resignation letter to the big guy. He then spots Santa as he lifts weights, because he has to be in shape and pack in the calories before the unthinkable physical exertion of traveling the globe and delivering gifts in a single night. It's such a boring way of presenting a character who could be and do anything.

Thankfully, this dry Santa is soon out of the picture, after some commandos raid the North Pole, looking like a slightly futuristic city under a constant cover of dark clouds, and abduct him. Callum gives chase, using convenient slides, ordering various barricades to be raised to block the abductors path, and pursuing them on a snowmobile. The security guy can use magic, too, by the way, transforming toys into the real deal they represent, and despite introducing the notion of magic, the movie implements it for cheap gags and cheaper action sequence.

The plot, of course, has Callum searching for Santa, forcibly volunteering the help of Jack O'Malley (Chris Evans), a cynical and sarcastic tracker who unwittingly gave up Santa's location to the villain, a wicked witch named Gryla (Kiernan Shipka). The reluctant partners bicker with little energy, visit the mystical—but, naturally, shadowy—castle of Santa's adopted brother Krampus (Kristofer Hivju, playing the creature under actual, physical makeup) and the sunny beaches of Aruba, and search for St. Nick.

The whole thing just feels as if it's on autopilot—from the straightforward plotting (Comic actor Nick Kroll is wasted as a provider of exposition), to Johnson and Evans each basically playing the grumpy straight man in their comedy duo, to Jack's character arc of being an absent father and realizing that won't do (Mary Elizabeth Ellis plays the mother, while Wesley Kimmel plays the kid), to the frantic climax that sets the heroes against a couple iterations of Gryla against a somehow even darker location at the North Pole. At a certain point, the visuals stop appearing simply gloomy and just start looking ugly.

Red One begins with a bland conceit. The movie's reliance on formula and hesitation to flex any imaginative muscle, though, makes it tedious.

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