There is something frustratingly commercial about the holiday action adventure ‘Red One.’ The film imagines that mythical creatures do exist – from witches and trolls and even Santa Claus – but a hi-tech organization watches over them and ensures that there is a semblance of peace between the mythological world and the human world. For this film, Santa Claus is given the code name of Red One by his team of bodyguards and assistants and he lives in the center of a vast cosmopolitan city in the North Pole, hidden by a force field and a cloaking mechanism.
Right at the onset, ‘Red One’ attempt to rationalize the mystical and the fantastical by creating shadow organizations that are leaning heavily more towards science and technology than they are, to what is essentially, the realm of magic and wonder and imagination. Red One’s sleigh is a hi-tech vessel run by his gigantic reindeer but let’s put a lot of levers and buttons on the sleigh just to make it look technological.
It’s an approach that feels unimaginative and wholly capitalist-driven.
In ‘Red One,’ Santa Claus (JK Simmons) is kidnapped and the head of his security detail, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) must work together with the man responsible for getting Santa caught in the first place: the hacker and fixer Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans). Jack doesn’t believe in Christmas. In fact, he doesn’t believe in anything. He’s an absentee father who uses his know-how to work high scale jobs for anonymous clients for big money. His latest job got Santa Claus kidnapped and now he’s the only lead to tracking down his client.
The film takes on the buddy-cop formula, Callum and Jack can’t stand each other and are morally opposite of each other, and as their search for Santa leads them to the witch Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), they discover her sinister plan to punish everyone who has ever been naughty, which will include Jack’s own son.
Despite all of Chris Evans’ charms, even he seems to struggle finding a sweet spot for Jack. As written, he’s an awful person and an awful dad and while the film attempts to redeem him (as a mainstream movie would do), Callum is also hoping to retire because he does not see the good in people anymore. Naturally, the film attempts to change his mind.
Throughout the film, the two battle it out against Gryla’s assortment of lackeys for some big special effect fights with explosive choreography that doesn’t really mean anything if you don’t particularly like anybody. The only time that the film touches upon something that feels really magical and special is when it brings them to Germany to visit Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) and everything about Krampus and his world feels the most authentic because it doesn’t rely on the hi-tech world that feels so odd in this story.
The marriage of science fiction and hi-technology and magic has been done before. You have television shows like ‘Dr. Who’ and ‘Torchwood’ who have made it work. The idea of Thor and Dr. Strange seems to fit well in the MCU but ‘Red One’ takes such pride in their gadgetry and tries to make Santa hip and cool rather than see that there is some level of coolness to the whimsy of an old man delivering gifts all by himself. The bombs and the explosions, the hi-tech gear, and flying cars all seem to undermine the whole spirit of the symbol that Santa brings. It’s not the toys but the good cheer and the generosity of spirit that makes Christmas so great.
Even with Lucy Liu, Bonnie Hunt, and a hilarious Nick Kroll can breathe some humanity in a film that imagines Santa Claus as a Mission Impossible agent and that Christmas is just job that he does every year. They say it’s for the kids, but the only real kid in the whole movie is that of Jack’s and he doesn’t really play a part until three-fourths of the movie.
My Rating:
Red One is now showing! Check showtimes and buy your tickets here.
