Red One | 2024
Kristofer Hivju and Dwayne Johnson in a scene from RED ONE. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.
Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) gets kidnapped by a vengeful witch (Kiernan Shipka) hellbent on punishing the naughty in Jake Kasdan's Red One, a Christmas-themed action comedy that doesn't seem to be made for anyone. Dwayne Johnson stars as Santa's stalwart bodyguard, a tough-minded soldier who's grown weary of all the naughtiness in the world, who is tasked with tracking Santa down, along with a hacker (Chris Evans) and Level 4 naughty-lister who uses the internet to track people down for a living.
Red One is one of those movies that feels more like content than an actual film, and it's almost shocking this thing made it to theaters instead of direct-to-streaming. It's an ugly, under-lit, joyless slog, devoid of any holiday charm or sense of fun. Johnson is doing his typical tough-guy thing, Evans seems lost, and Lucy Liu shows up to collect a paycheck, but no one's heart seems to be in this. Not even Simmons, whose jacked Santa is barely in the movie at all.
I was reminded of the scene in The Santa Clause where Tim Allen's Scott Calvin sarcastically describes a militarized Santa as if it were a complete joke. Red One feels like that scenario come to life, with Santa and his elves as some secret military operation, shamelessly borrowing the worst bits of the Santa Clause films in a sort of hapless hodgepodge of ideas that feel like the filmmakers are just throwing holiday-themed references at a wall and seeing what sticks.
The biggest issue with the film, however, is it doesn't seem to know who it's for. It's a PG-13 action film about Santa Claus that uses fairly kid-oriented themes and ideas for...laughs? For actual kids? Who is the audience here? It's not a kids movie, and I can't see many adults enjoying this either. The "young at heart" element just isn't there. It takes its conceit far too seriously, but there's only so many times you can use ideas like the naughty list as both a joke and a serious representation of a person's morality. Evans' character, for example, is a mostly absent father, and his status on the naughty list evaporates when he reconciles with his son, a moment that feels so cynically calculated that it makes Hallmark movies look like the pinnacle of emotional acuity. You'll find no whimsy or charm here, because Red One isn't a movie, it's content - meant to be consumed and forgotten with equal speed.
