Movie Review: ‘Red One’

Dwayne Johnson and director Jake Kasdan labor hard to make ‘Red One’ an instant Christmas classic, but it feels like the present nobody really wanted.

(L to R) Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans in 'Red One'. Credit: Courtesy of Prime. Copyright: © Amazon Content Services LLC.

Opening in theaters on November 15th is ‘Red One,’ directed by Jake Kasdan and starring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, J.K. Simmons, Lucy Liu, Bonnie Hunt, Kiernan Shipka, Kristofer Hivju, and Nick Kroll.

Initial Thoughts

'Red One'. Credit: Courtesy of Prime. Copyright: © Amazon Content Services LLC.

Not to be confused with Netflix’s ‘Red Notice,’ another algorithm-induced action movie starring Dwayne Johnson and a Marvel superhero, ‘Red One’ aims to be something for everyone: it’s not just an action movie, but it’s also trying to be a fantastical Christmas story and a heartwarming family yarn. As often happens, however, the effort to please all audience quadrants results in something bland, boring, and derivative.

Directed by Jake Kasdan, who also collaborated with The Rock on the recent, overrated ‘Jumanji’ movies, ‘Red One’ does feature a cute idea at its core and a winning performance from J.K. Simmons as a very different kind of Santa Claus. But a lethargic pace, an often-murky visual palette and a ton of half-baked CG, along with less than stellar efforts from some of the cast, makes ‘Red One’ the kind of holiday present you hope they included the gift receipt for.

Story and Direction

'Red One'. Credit: Courtesy of Prime. Copyright: © Amazon Content Services LLC.

‘Red One’ opens with a prologue in which a young boy named Jack O’Malley (Wyatt Hunt) shows his disappointed cousins where the Christmas gifts are hidden, simultaneously smashing their dreams and foreshadowing his adult career as a cynical, clandestine tracker and bounty hunter (now played by Chris Evans) who claims he can find anything. He’s also – as par for the course for this kind of thing – divorced and a largely absentee dad to his son. But Jack’s life takes an unexpected turn when he helps an anonymous client pinpoint a security breach at some kind of mysterious location near the North Pole.

That location happens to be the complex where Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons), his wife (Bonnie Hunt), and their many human and non-human employees live and work behind a security shield that might give Wakanda a run for its money. But that security is compromised thanks to Jack, and despite the best efforts of Santa’s head of security, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), a quasi-military squad parachutes in and kidnaps “Nick” – as Callum calls him – whisking him into the clutches of Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), a legendary winter witch who wants to channel Santa’s magical powers to disrupt Christmas with her own nefarious plans.

That leaves it up to Drift and Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu), head of the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority (M.O.R.A.), which oversees the existence of mythological creatures around the world, to forcibly recruit Jack in their efforts to reacquire Santa and keep Christmas on schedule. Along the way they’ll interact with more creatures out of legend, including Santa’s estranged brother Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), while Jack learns the value of family and Drift slowly regains the positive outlook he's lost over the centuries as more and more humans migrate to – you guessed it – the Naughty List.

(Right) Dwayne Johnson in 'Red One'. Credit: Courtesy of Prime. Copyright: © Amazon Content Services LLC.

On paper, this sounds like a fun, even fresh premise for a Christmas movie – all the creatures of myth and folklore are real and live in a cautious détente with humanity, while Santa himself trains for Christmas like an Olympian and covertly visits department stores in presidential-style motorcades just to reconnect with the public. Some of this material elicits a smile for sure, even as the world-building threatens to overwhelm the narrative at times.

The bigger issue is the film moves at the pace of an elf who’s had far too much spiked egg nog. It’s also tonally all over the place; one minute it’s a self-referential action movie, the next it’s a family comedy desperate to tug at the heart. Either way, none of the jokes or emotional beats land very well, and when a comic performer like Nick Kroll gets wasted in a painful cameo you know this is the cinematic equivalent to the Christmas that you really wanted that Xbox and got a sweater instead.

And it looks like hell too. Large swaths of the movie take place at night in the snow, but Kasdan makes it inexplicably murky, particularly the climactic sequences, and there’s enough bad CG to make ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ look like ‘Dune: Part Two.’ One scene set at a beach resort can’t escape painfully looking like it was shot on a Volume stage, with the digital snowmen that launch a surprise attack in the sequence looking pasted into the action. For a movie that reportedly cost $250 million to make, ‘Red One’ doesn’t deliver on the kind of big-screen wonder necessary to make this work.

The Cast

(L to R) Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans in 'Red One.' Photo: Amazon MGM Studios.

If there is one thing that stands out in ‘Red One,’ it’s J.K. Simmons’ performance as Santa. Playing against the archetype – this wiry St. Nicholas lays off the holiday cookies and trains relentlessly for his ‘Mission: Impossible’-like Christmas Eve run – Simmons nevertheless generates real warmth, good will, and wisdom as the jolly old fellow. It’s a shame that he’s only active for the beginning and end of the film, as a movie built around him might have been more interesting.

As for the leads, both Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans seem to be in something of a rut lately. The Rock has lost some of the self-deprecating sense of fun that has powered some of his best performances, and takes Callum Drift – a centuries-old head of security – so seriously that he comes across as monotonous. Evans as well, seemingly intent on getting past his earnest Captain America image, plays a variation here on the kind of cynical wisenheimer he’s essayed in recent duds like ‘The Gray Man,’ although he’s also trapped by the script’s rote characterization. Other members of the cast, like Lucy Liu and an underused Bonnie Hunt, more or less understand the assignment, although Kiernan Shipka is miscast as the villain, delivering no real menace at all. Kristofer Hivju stands out under a mountain of prosthetics as Krampus, although the scene at his castle goes on way too long.

Final Thoughts

J.K. Simmons in 'Red One'. Credit: Courtesy of Prime. Copyright: © Amazon Content Services LLC.

You can’t just manufacture a holiday classic, but that certainly isn’t stopping Jake Kasdan, Dwayne Johnson, and company from trying. But Kasdan, who brought a certain amount of surreal humor to the ‘Jumanji’ movies, can’t work any magic here. ‘Red One’ huffs and puffs so hard to be all things to all people that it just ends up playing in similar fashion to one of those Netflix pics that’s good for Sunday-afternoon-chores background noise.

Perhaps a different, less ponderous, and less digitized story starring J.K. Simmons’ Nick could have concentrated on generating some real holiday spirit, but ‘Red One’ is likely to be packed away with the rest of the Christmas trinkets in the attic once the season is over, never to be seen or heard from again.

‘Red One’ receives 4 out of 10 stars.

Red One

"The mission to save Christmas is on."

PG-132 hr 4 minNov 15th, 2024

Showtimes & Tickets

After a villain kidnaps Santa from the North Pole, an E.L.F (Extremely Large and Formidable) operative (Dwayne Johnson) must partner with the world’s most accomplished... Read the Plot

What is the plot of ‘Red One’?

A hacker (Chris Evans) is recruited by the head of Santa Claus’s security team (Dwayne Johnson) to help rescue St. Nick (J.K. Simmons) after he’s kidnapped by a witch intent on ruining Christmas for everyone.