Red One is a Christmas action comedy that has only a marginal amount of the former and a severe lack of the latter. It’s a movie that leaves its two stars marooned in material that has almost no sense of imagination or whimsy. Rather, the screenplay feels like it has regurgitated parts of other Christmas movies that are forced.
Dwayne Johnson stars as Callum Drift, a bodyguard who works for M.O.R.A. or the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority. His job is to protect Santa Claus (J K. Simmons), but Callum is growing increasingly disillusioned by the number of naughty people in the world.
Santa gets kidnapped on Christmas Eve, and Callum attempts to find him before Christmas is ruined. He can’t do it alone, and he has to work with a reluctant tracker named Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans).
Callum and Jack have to go through a series of places to get one step closer to Santa, such as Aruba, where they have to face off against a group of abominable snowmen. Another scene has the two of them confronting Krampus (Kristopher Hivju), Santa’s adopted brother. Scenes such as these supply the action, but we also spend far more time than we want in them and wish the plot wasn’t on autopilot.
The villain in Red One is Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), a witch responsible for kidnapping Santa. Her character has no real motivation for kidnapping Santa other than she’s the villain. It’s almost as if the screenwriters knew how paper-thin this plot was. One of her mechanisms is keeping Santa unconscious for most of the movie, which is how I think anybody who goes to see it will be themselves.
There’s almost no chemistry between Johnson and Evans. If anything, their relationship is poured over from other buddy comedies, leaving nothing but standard banter punctuated by occasional dialogue that no doubt sets up how the movie will end.
$250 million was spent to make Red One, which cared much more about the special effects than the script. When it’s not overstuffed with pointless action sequences, it leaves us in scenes that either drag on and on or become cloying about Christmas itself. Plus, it’s not funny.
There’s talk of Evans’ character being on the naughty list. Well, this movie is likely to end up on my ‘worst movies’ list at the end of the year.
Grade: C-
(Rated PG-13 for action, some violence, and language.)
