"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Red One

RED ONE is not a prequel to THE BIG RED ONE or READY PLAYER ONE, but in fact a Christmas fantasy action movie produced by Amazon Product Corporation and starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Chris Formerly Captain America Evans. It has made around $180 million in theaters but is considered a flop because it cost something like $250 million before marketing. I have seen many holding it up as an example of the worst fucking crap imaginable. “Slop,” if you will.

I don’t have a high opinion of most of the recent artistic choices of the named parties, so I didn’t rush out to see it. But now I have seen it on Amazon’s streaming/package delivery service (it’s already on there) and it is my duty to report that I liked it. This is a genuinely funny movie! That is not something I expect out of Dwayne T.R. Johnson in the year 2024.

If you read entertainment news you might know that The Rock has been on a tear saying his usual corporate-brain-damaged franchise salesman nonsense about RED ONE. My favorite is when he saw OPPENHEIMER in the specific Imax theater and seat that Christopher Nolan screens them in and said “RED ONE on this screen and with this technology could be game over.” And yet somehow the actual movie indicates that he still has some good impulses left. I was ahead of the curve on Roxit (abandoning The Rock) – to me the problem is that he found out he could be Funny The Rock, so he started doing feature length skits masquerading as movies, joking around more than playing characters. I did not think he had the discipline to let go of that crutch, but he proved me wrong when it mattered most: the movie that has to pretend to be totally serious to be funny.

I will stop rebutting hypothetical haters shortly, but this is where I’ve seen people either being disingenuous or humorless: they act like they don’t get that a big flashy action movie about a bodyguard from an organization called E.L.F. teaming up with a hacker/thief to rescue Santa Claus from kidnappers is meant to be absurd. There are a few jokey scenes, but thankfully 90% of it follows the ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER or PRIDE + PREJUDICE + ZOMBIES ethic of being funny by executing the ludicrous concept as if in good faith, without winking or nudging. Evans’ character does make jokes, but the same type of jokes he would make as the cynical partner in a normal action movie where there’s not a buff upright polar bear in tactical gear named Garcia (Reinaldo Faberlie, “Large Guerrilla,” THE SUICIDE SQUAD).

It’s SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE meets OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN. In this world, Santa (J.K. Simmons, FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME) likes to do mall appearances to stay connected with the people, but it’s like a presidential visit, they have the bullet proof limo, security detail, fighter jet and everything. The Rock’s character Callum Drift (great name) works closest with Santa, is his weightlifting spotter, etc., and Santa is disappointed that he’s hanging it up after this Christmas. He’s become disillusioned with the state of grown ups. “We’re up almost 22% year over year. For the first time ever, more people are on the naughty list than not. And it’s like they don’t even care.” (Somehow this movie predicted Trump was gonna win.)

The North Pole in this movie is not what we’ve seen before. It’s a full on magical polar metropolis. Santa’s original cozy cottage is fenced off as a historical landmark that Callum looks at to remember where it all began. Now Santa lives in a sleek tower fortress, but that doesn’t stop the unthinkable from happening on Christmas Eve: a black ops team breaks in and abducts him.

Callum gives chase but they escape through a breach in “The Dome” that makes the whole area invisible. His boss, Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority director Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS) is able to trace the incident to Jack O’Malley (Evans, SNOWPIERCER), a “level 4 naughty lister” who was paid to hack the intercontinental seismic surveillance system to, he thought, “find someone who was running tests on some weapons systems in the Arctic.” Zoe forces him to work with Callum to find the kidnappers, so it’s kind of a 48 HOURS situation, except Nick Nolte didn’t have the power to travel via portals in the back of toy stores or Hot Wheels blown up to human size.

Evans does some kind of east coast accent, as if he agrees with me that Chris Hemsworth surpassed him as the best Chris when he did BLACKHAT. He does make some comments about the craziness of the premise, but not wacky riffing, and everybody stares at him blankly like he’s an asshole. Meanwhile, he has a subplot that’s standard for both action and Christmas movies – he’s a fuck up who has disappointed his son Dylan (Wesley Kimmel, The Mandalorian) and learns to do better. In this version that happens after they both get trapped in magical snow globes. Also of course he will win Callum’s respect by being less selfish than expected.

Their mission brings them face to face with Santa’s dangerous brother Krampus (Kristofer Hivju [Game of Thrones] in makeup created by Joel Harlow [PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN series, THE TOXIC AVENGER PARTs II and III]), who lives in a palace surrounded by tough guy hangers on like Jabba the Hutt and does not take kindly to their visit. But the culprit is actually the shapeshifting Christmas witch Grýla (Kiernan Shipka, LONGLEGS), who has a fascist plan to condemn everyone on the naughty list (not counting herself and her movement, one would guess).

The plot comes together more elegantly than in some of the serious blockbusters, honestly, but it’s really an engine for finding goofy ways to combine Santa Claus shit with big budget action. There is, of course, a high speed sled chase, plus a flying reindeer action setpiece. There’s a “your foster parents are dead” moment (having to do with which kinds of cookies Santa doesn’t like) and a part where Callum says “The North Pole has been taken.” The Rock says it so perfectly I had to rewind it and watch it again. You have all your funny little details like Callum’s red and green leather jacket, the hydroponic mistletoe greenhouse, and the holographic globe display that maps out who’s sleeping and awake. Bonnie Hunt (BEETHOVEN) plays Mrs. Claus more like the First Lady. I think it would be really easy to do this stuff too broad, so I’m really impressed how much of it they got exactly right.

One of the more inspired ideas is when they’re on a beach and an ice cream truck pulls up and three snowman thugs climb out to fight them. The idea of muscular snowmen is so funny to me, and they find a way to make a bowler hat and a corncob pipe look like some kind of macho Peaky Blinders type style. Also one of them uses a snowflake-shaped ice throwing star.

It’s truly a great use of CG technology. JURASSIC PARK hatched so burly snow hooligans could glisten.


This is kind of a similar idea to last year’s VIOLENT NIGHT, which combined a DIE HARD ripoff scenario with Santa Claus fantasy and other Christmas movie themes. That was the hard-R and medium budget version – meaner, gorier, more contained and economically responsible, and more geared toward the type of action I prefer (one-on-one fights choreographed by 87Eleven). But if forced at the point of a sharpened candy cane to choose the best of the recent Santa Claus action movies I’m afraid RED ONE has the edge. Part of that is that VIOLENT NIGHT is a traditional comedy with a cast of wacky characters making jokes. RED ONE’s mostly deadpan approach is more my speed of humor. But also both of them try to do the sweet holiday message that would be in a normal Christmas movie, and that part feels a little off in VIOLENT NIGHT since it’s intentionally populated with rich fuckfaces who do very little to earn their happy ending.

On the other hand this one probly comes from the more evil corporation, so I’m glad if they lost money on it. Hopefully they’ll make a sequel with twice the budget and even poorer reception. RED ONE part one is directed by Jake Kasdan (ZERO EFFECT, WALK HARD) and written by Chris Morgan (FAST AND FURIOUS 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, and HOBBS & SHAW), and that seems to be a pretty good combination for well-executed ridiculousness.

 

Regardless of the movie, merry Christmas and/or Wednesday everybody. I hope it’s a good one for you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 24th, 2024 at 6:51 am and is filed under Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

18 Responses to “Red One”

  1. Zod bless you Vern. And Zod bless you every one

  2. Yup, as I said here somewhere earlier, this is indeed a fun movie that had the bad luck of coming out when variations of THE DAY THE REINDEER DIED aren’t new and fresh anymore and of course we were all collectively sick of its star. I guess I liked it a bit less than you (My biggest problem was that it suffered from “I could be 20-30 minutes shorter” syndrome of most modern Hollywood movies), but generally had fun. It treats its premise with the right mix of “Don’t worry, we won’t SHARKNADO it” and “But it’s also not the kind of joke that is supposed to be funny because there is no joke” and has a wonderful “It’s easy to give up hope in these shitty times, but look around, good people are still everywhere” message. Plus: Out of all Santas that have been re-imagined for modern times, this might maybe my favourite because of JK Simmons natural charisma. The scene in the beginning, where he is in the mall and talks to the kids genuinely happy to hear what they want and is as excited about them asking for video games as if they would request an old timey toy track or baby doll, makes you instantly like him. Simmons is the rare breed of actor who can play the loveable best friend or father figure AND a scary psychopath and convinces in both kind of part.

    But it’s 2024 and Hollywood STILL can’t hire people who helps the actor to pronounce foreign (as in “not English”) words correctly? The “German” in the last 1/3 was quite the headache. (It’s pronounced “Glahs-keh-fig”, not “Gluss-ku-fig”)

    Anyway, happy holidays to you Vern and all the people on here. (Except the few who deserves their ass whipped by Krampus.)

  3. I surprisingly liked it too! Just call me Fred One for the season (maybe another week til New Year).

    It has some wonky green screen and agree w CJ it’s too long both those are all tropes of modern blockbusters. They could’ve done more w the Rock Em Sock Em Robots but I’m just glad they’re in there and I liked the idea. Likewise the ninja snowmen.

    The world sadly slept on Kasdan’s masterpiece Walk Hard so we won’t be getting more of those but he seems to be able to apply his sensibility to make franchises like this and Jumanji way more fun than they’d seem under their corporate overlords.

  4. FATMAN also did the « what if THE NIGHT THE REINDEER DIED was not a joke used to show that Bill Murray’s character in SCROOGED has lost his mind, but a legitimately good idea for a real movie » thing and also played it straight, but with a low budget and zero creativity, and I was worried that RED ONE would just be the more obnoxious version of FATMAN. Glad to hear that they put some effort into it, now I almost hope that the Rock’s people are going to watch ROBOCOP and convince him that IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM could work as a real sitcom with him as Bixby Snyder.

  5. As I said in the VIOLENT NIGHT thread, this one actually got me in the feels a bit. I think a key difference is that VIOLENT NIGHT is meant as a joke, whereas RED ONE fully commits to its goofy premise with wholesome sincerity.

    I like the moral debate between the idea that naughty vs nice is a choice we make anew every day (an optimistic attitude that allows for the possibility of personal growth), vs the idea that if you’ve ever been even a little naughty then you deserve the maximum punishment now and forever (an increasingly popular view among the self-appointed moralists of social media, which in this film is the view of the villain).

    Both VIOLENT NIGHT and RED ONE are about the North Pole losing faith in the possibility of people being nice instead of naughty. Again, in VIOLENT NIGHT it’s a cynical joke – ha ha people suck, even Santa Claus thinks so! In RED ONE, Johnson expressing his concerns to Santa is played with the utmost grave seriousness, clearly resonating with the increasing ugliness in our culture in a way that to me seems bold for a kid-friendly adventure story.

  6. I liked it too. I liked basically everything Vern mentioned but I’d also give a shout out to some cool creature design. I loved the giant-sized reindeer, many of the creatures in krampus’s lair, and especially the Act III incarnation of Gryla, who looked badass.

    This movie’s trailer was wholly honest about what it was going for in tone and content and the movie executes it well. The poor critical reception is ridiculous: if a person isn’t up for for is Santa-is-kidnapped-action movie, that person should skip this movie instead of watching it and complaining.

  7. Haven’t seen this one yet, but now I will make a point to do so soon. We’ll take the wins and good vibes where we can find them, and it’s good to hear that this movie is providing some. Happy Holidays to all!

  8. Solid review, but I don’t really know if I can take this one. It sounds like, “they really commit to the idea and take it seriously!” but, um… It’s kind of a shitty, stupid idea, seemingly designed to make older kids interested in Santa Claus even after they’ve stopped believing. I want to be open minded (this guy made Walk Hard!!) but this really sounds like it would be my least favorite movie ever.

  9. I can’t say I hated this one, it’s technically inoffensive. Only time I laughed was when Lucy Liu solemnly says she might have to cancel Xmas like it’s WW3 or something. For once I want a Xmas movie where Christmas is over or something, just to see what that actually means.

    I’m glad others liked this more but I think of CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES (if we are talking streaming films) which had a delightful AF Kurt Russell lead performance, so good that it runs rings around the leads in R1. VIOLENT NIGHT similarly hit that chord for me with Harbour’s work.

    I do think the internet’s pissyness over this movie is about Dwayne fatigue, mad at Amazon, being too smart for school for something like this and the usual nonsense. I’m indifferent to this but I can at least comprehend why people liked* this one and why it did good business for a movie everybody can stream a month later: because low risk low reward 4 quarters movie.

    *=Something which online film discourse struggles with.

  10. Nothing against Russell’s CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES Santa, but that movie was otherwise an incredibly average kids movie that didn’t even try to do anything new. And sadly not in the “We use all the well known and beloved tropes for something charming and entertaining”, but more a “We don’t give a fuck, someone is gonna watch it anyway” way. Compared to this, RED ONE is a modern masterpiece that will influence filmmakers for generations to come.

  11. My issue with RED ONE is that I finished all 2 hours of it and felt……nothing. A 200M Tentpole with Big Stars that only engender languid apathy in me is a problem. It should at the very least, get a pulse rise out of me for how juvenile and inept it is (looking at you VENOM THE LAST DANCE) or provoke some mixed feelings like I had watching THE FALL GUY wondering why I needed to wade through a lame Ryan Gosling/Emily Blunt rom com to get to some pretty cool action sequences. But RED ONE’S let’s just get this shit over with artificiality did neither. There’s the Rock, playing the 250th variation of the stoic Hulk who’s now thinking of quitting because he’s depressed at how rotten people have become. So….you’ve been doing this shit for like I don’t know 900 centuries, and the savagery of the Dark Ages, the Crusades of the Medieval Era, a couple of World Wars didn’t convince you that as a race, it’s in our nature to destroy ourselves (fuck man, did u even watch Terminator 2???) but a harried shopper saying she’s gonna kill people because the store ran out of stuff is what’s tipping you over the edge? Fuck off man.

    There’s Chris Evans, hammering yet another nail into the Captain America coffin, playing a cynical douchebag who’s …SHOCK!HORROR! divorced and …are you sitting down for this??…estranged from his son.

    Over the course of the movie, Black Adam and Cap America will need to overcome their distrust of one another and along the way, one regains his faith in humanity and one locates the caring core at the center of his cynicism…and I still can’t give a shit. There’s the lame-ass climax ripped off of the MCU playbook where live action figures battle giant CGI screen savers with all the weightlessness that comes with it. There’s the wonderful Bonnie Hunt wasted. Oh, there’s Lucy Liu with another variation of the Dragon Lady/Tiger Mom Tough Asian Chick Schtick.

    I did wonder, why show a jacked Santa who bench presses like 200 pounds and crushes out 500 push ups and calls it a warm up, then have him be comatose for the majority of the movie’s run time?

    Why plunder Nordic myths with abandon, bring in Krampus and not have the main conflict be between these 2 brothers with diametrically opposed ideologies when it comes to Christmas? Why not have Krampus tag team with Grylla to take down Santa instead of him showing up at the end acting like he wants to reconnect with an ex girlfriend but then turns around and helps his brother instead? Why? Don’t know.

    Santa gets this How Bad Ass is he speech somewhere about how only he can read a list of a billion children twice when it would take most people decades, how only he can deliver presents to a billion households in a single night, then…he gets taken out like a punk in his own fortress and stashed away in the basement somewhere, where their sophisticated surveillance system couldn’t figure out he never left the place?

    RED ONE isn’t bad because it’s absurd. It’s bad because it’s lazy as fuck. The premises aren’t thought through, the world building is half-assed, the action set pieces mediocre and the comedy lame.

    It’s apparently doing great on streaming, which makes sense. RED ONE isn’t a movie that demands you focus, it’s something you can leave on while multi-tasking at least 3 other things, glance up occasionally and not miss a single narrative beat.

    Movies like this make me like VIOLENT NIGHT even more because they take their singular premise (in this case, “Or so you think DIE HARD is a Christmas pic, huh? Well here’s a Christmas Pic that’s DIE HARD) and goes full throttle with it. Or the underrated FATMAN, that combined a Noirish Hitman Thriller with a Santa Flick and took it’s world building seriously.

    You know what? I take back what I said earlier about RED ONE not making me feel anything. In the time it took me to write this, I’ve realized that I hate this fucking movie.

  12. Kay Kay – I agree on the love for FATMAN. Can I knock that one for being a Coen Brothers wannabe film? Sure but it’s a decent CB wannabe movie, with good work from the two leads. Mad Mel especially switching between sentimental/melancholic Santa and don’t fuck with me.

    I like Evans, dude is doing what he can but his last few movies he’s been left out to dry. Dwayne is Hulk Hogan 1996: working a gimmick that did wonders for him but now many many people find it stale and he badly needs a fresh reboot. Coincidentally he’s got an Oscar bait A24 film in the pipeline so maybe that’ll help him?

    CJ Holden – You’re not wrong, the plot is Xmas movie boiler plate. Same with the sequel. But again, sometimes a good lively lead performance can make one enjoy the cliches more so than usual for me.

  13. While I’m sure this is fun for the whole family, allow me to recommend two alternatives turning 40 in the new year

    Runaway Train
    – I believe a Christmas carol is heard in the background during an early scene, there’s a lot of snow, and the true meaning of Christmas is repped

    To Live and Die in LA
    – Apparently the action takes place over Christmas/New Year’s according to the titles, even though no character ever acknowledges this. BUT Christmas decorations are seen in bars during a few scenes

  14. I started watching this a couple days ago and didn’t make it past the half hour. I liked a few things (mainly J.K. Simmons’s bro Santa), but I honestly couldn’t get into it. Felt too much like a kid’s movie; The humor was too broad, I didn’t like the design for anything, and when the first action scene hit and it was mid-tier MCU, I checked out. Nothing for me here.
    (Don’t mean to judge anyone who liked this – I like some of its ideas on paper… plus, I’m pretty close to a real-life grinch when it comes to Christmas sentimentality, which is a pretty fucking huge strike against this sort of thing.)

    Bummed out, I remembered I COME IN PEACE took place during the holidays, and rewatched that instead. I think we can all agree that’s a goddamn, near-DIE-HARD Christmas classic – what a great movie! It’s on Prime as DARK ANGEL. Then I got depressed when I checked what Baxley’s been up to since STONE COLD. At least he’s made a career for himself.

    I also watched CHRISTMAS CARNAGE. I liked it! Will comment on its review.

    Before that it was the 2012 version of SILENT NIGHT, a very loose remake of SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT that didn’t do anything for me – it’s well made, but other than an ugly sleaziness it doesn’t really have anything going for it.

    A CHRISTMAS HORROR STORY is a mediocre low-budget anthology which actually reminded me of RED ONE a little bit, as it takes its silly premise(s) mostly straight and one of the stories takes place in an aggressively artificial CGI Santa’s fortress as he fends off zombie elves sent by Krampus. It’s got a killer twist, but honestly it’s not as fun as it sounds. The other stories are mostly ok on paper, but drag on too much and all the intercutting robs them of any momentum.

    Finally, I didn’t like NUTCRACKER as much as others did here, but I’ll pull my comment to that discussion.

    And that’s the extent of my Christmas watching for this year. Winner: I COME IN PEACE. Someone please let that guy make more action. Merry Christmas everyone!

  15. I saw a meme the other day which pointed to a little festive green tree on a desk in FIRST BLOOD and thus it’s a Xmas movie.

    I’m cool with that.

  16. Billydeethrilliams

    December 25th, 2024 at 7:16 am

    Just watched Cash On Demand. It’s about a tight 80 minutes of classic British acting and suspense. Watch this instead of overlong consumer trash with the aesthetic appeal of watching a commercial after having urine thrown in your eyes like Red One. You’re welcome. Now I’m off to see Nosferatu.

  17. Ugh, NOSFERATU? The proof that Hollywood is now so out of original ideas that they start to remake 100 year old mockbusters of more popular and better IPs?

    (Just kidding of course.)

  18. NOSFERATU about to ruin a lot of Christmases.

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