Red One (2024, dir. Jake Kasdan)

by Jack Martin | Nov 8, 2024

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 123 mins

UK Distributor: Warner Bros

UK Release Date: 6 November 2024

WHO’S IN RED ONE?

Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, J.K. Simmons, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Reinaldo Faberlle, Kristofer Hivju, Nick Kroll, Wesley Kimmel, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Jenna Kanell

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Jake Kasdan (director, producer), Chris Morgan (writer, producer), Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia, Dwayne Johnson and Melvin Mar (producers), Henry Jackman (composer), Dan Mindel (cinematographer), Steve Edwards, Mark Helfrich and Tara Timpone (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

When Santa Claus (Simmons) is kidnapped, his head of security (Johnson) turns to an unlikely source…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON RED ONE?

Every Christmas, we rewatch festive hits like The Muppet Christmas Carol, Home Alone and It’s a Wonderful Life because not only do they capture the bright and shining spirit of the holidays, but they also work as genuinely great movies that encourage annual rewatches through their sheer quality alone. That is something you don’t really get with a lot of the Christmas movies made today, which are nowadays manufactured to be so Christmasy that it often feels forced and insincere, and more severely are forgotten almost as soon as they’ve been viewed (there’s a metaphor for the consumerism of Christmas somewhere in that sentence, but I’ll leave that for you to find).

Red One is most certainly one of those movies, as you will have probably figured out. But there is something far more disingenuous about director Jake Kasdan’s would-be Christmas classic, which transforms it from a merely bad movie to a rather cold and decisively unappealing one. Or, in Christmas speak, nothing more than a pure lump of coal at the bottom of your stocking.

The film reimagines the myth surrounding Santa Claus (played by J.K. Simmons, providing some of the film’s only source of warmth) in a world where not only do they all exist, but are monitored by an active government force led by Lucy Liu’s Zoe Harlow (a thankless role for the former Angel of Charlie’s). Santa’s whole operation is run with military-like precision, with his head of security Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) overseeing everything up to the moment that Santa takes off on Christmas Eve in his sleigh and giant-sized reindeer from the North Pole. However, just days before Christmas, Santa is suddenly kidnapped by the evil witch Gryla (Kiernan Shipka, doing what she can in a part that’s nothing more than sinister glares and stock villain dialogue), and Callum – desperate to locate his boss and friend – turns to the one person on earth who could possibly find him: Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a bounty hunter and skilled tracker who – gasp! – doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.

Before you can even consider the confusion surrounding Jack’s disbelief in Santa in a world where it appears to hardly be a secret that he is indeed real, Red One is filled with so many inconsistencies that it almost makes you want to ask for a notebook for Christmas just to keep track of them all. Narratively, it’s all over the place with characters making decisions that don’t really make much sense, even in the heightened fantastical world in which this all seems to take place in, while there are moments that are specifically designed to happen just out of pure convenience for the plot, regardless of whether it all adds up. It’s also the kind of film that fills itself with endless exposition dialogue that partially explains how this universe works, which ends up removing so much of the magic from this otherwise decent idea for a Christmas film.

From a tonal and structural perspective, the film is even messier. It’s a good half-hour longer than it needs to be, thanks to certain sequences going on for what feels like an eternity, as Chris Morgan’s script all too freely picks the least opportune moments to throw in some backstory and even more unnecessary exposition dialogue. It also juggles so many competing tones – it’s an action-comedy one moment, then it’s a full-on fantasy and at one point it even becomes a supernatural horror – that it becomes less and less clear about who its target audience is supposed to be. Kids might find it too intense, while adults just won’t care. And not once does Kasdan, who has been proven to work well enough in the realm of big blockbuster entertainment with his Jumanji films, bring it all together to form something that can be enjoyed by all, with unenthusiastic direction that screams of “corporate mandate” (more on that in a bit).

It would be one thing if there was indeed any sense of fun in this movie, but surprisingly for the kind of film it’s trying to be, there really isn’t. The visuals, particularly regarding the CG-coated landscape of the North Pole, are hideously ugly to look at, with a lot of drab and dark colour schemes that leave you feeling increasingly less festive. Certain add-ons that on paper sound creative, like devices that turn toys into actual objects and having you shrinking down like Ant-Man, come with all the enthusiasm of clearing up all the wrapping paper on Christmas morning, and that’s in the moments where such things are actually utilised. Not even the banter between the actors is good, for there is no discernible chemistry between Johnson and Evans, and everyone else just appears to be reciting lines that they probably just rehearsed that morning whilst on the set.

It fails as an action movie, since a lot of the key sequences come with far too much CGI coating to fully buy any of the outlandish stunts that the likes of Dwayne Johnson are performing. It fails as a comedy, because you’re never laughing aside from all the weird and random stuff in the background (case in point: there are rockhopper penguins just walking about in a climate where, unless I’m mistaken, they are not often found) and one of Chris Evans’ all too appropriate reactions to such things. It even struggles to be a decent star vehicle for Johnson, who spends most of the movie standing with a singular scowl across his face, a far cry from the actor’s usual charismatic presence (although given the reported allegations of his repeated lateness to set, which ended up delaying production and ballooning its overall cost, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was more to this character and performance other than the block of wood he comes off as that had to be removed due to him not being there).

But perhaps most insidiously, it fails as a Christmas film – specifically, one that actually succeeds at capturing what the season is all about. Beyond its oddly masculine depiction of familiar festive imagery like Santa, his reindeer etc, Red One adopts a borderline uncomfortable militaristic vibe that appears to promote not just the privatisation of a universally adored figure, but also the rampant commercialisation of a holiday that is meant to be about generosity and being kind to others. When one of the film’s first scenes consists of J.K. Simmons’ Santa being excited to be in a shopping mall, surrounded by hundreds of rampant shoppers and being asked by kids for the latest Nintendo Switch game, you know that there is some deep cynicism that has gone into the making of this movie, because there is barely a hint of the warmth and wonder that one usually feels at Christmas, now replaced by corporate monopolisation and an insatiable greed for all the wrong things.

The irony is apparently lost on the filmmakers that this movie is literally a product of Amazon (the corporation is distributing it through its acquired MGM label, with Warner Bros handling international markets like the UK), which only partially explains why it feels like the kind of soulless, cynical item that one orders close to Christmas without any thought or effort.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Red One is a soulless and cynical attempt to create a new Christmas classic, but by removing all the magic and fun of the holiday and replacing it with an inconsistent, tonally disjointed and ultimately corporate-feeling product, it more than earns its spot on the naughty list.