Red One, the new Christmas action comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans rescuing a kidnapped Santa Claus, is an absurd movie. You probably didn’t need me to tell you that. But what you might not know is that it’s also a lot more fun than an idea that ridiculous has any right to be.
Let me be clear: To enjoy this movie, you have to decide to get excited when the Rock glowers at the camera and melodramatically announces, “The North Pole has been taken.” But if you can do that, what’s waiting is a film that is about as good as an average Marvel movie, which, if you can remember, were certainly worth a trip to the theater a few years ago.
And Marvel movie is exactly what the producers were going for here. There is a secretive agency that protects mythological characters. Lucy Liu plays the Nick Fury character. The film is a little bit of Guardians of the Galaxy, a little bit of Ant-Man, and a little bit of Captain Marvel. And if that’s the scale, it’s a bit below Ant-Man, but much better than Captain Marvel.
We start with Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) as a child, spoiling Christmas for the other kids. He grows to be a rotten drunk, and bad father who literally steals candy from babies.
He’s hired by a mysterious force to track a radar signal which, unbeknownst to him, leads to Santa Claus being kidnapped.
Santa Claus is played by J.K Simmons as a Jeff Bezos-type with a heart of gold, who sees the best in everyone, even when they’re on the naughty list. But his head of security, Cal (Dwayne Johnson), struggles with how rotten adults have become and doesn’t have the heart to stick with it. “You just have to see them for who they truly are, and believe in them,” Santa encourages him because “inside every lost grown-up is the kids they once were.”
When Santa is kidnapped with twenty-four hours to Christmas, Zoe (Lucy Liu) the head of MORA, brings Cal and Jack together to head up a rescue mission.
I certainly don’t want to ruin any twists, but maybe in trying to rescue Santa, Cal and Jack come to feel the spirit of Christmas. You’ll have to watch it to find out.
Our big bad is Gryla, an Icelandic mythological figure who eats misbehaving children. In Red One she’s merely tired of Santa Claus’ permissiveness and believes the naughty need to be punished, so she’s going to capture them in snow globes that she’s going to deliver for Christmas in lieu of Santa.
The production design here is top rate. And the performers are all having fun. Chris Evans and Dwayne Johnson have such a natural chemistry together, I had to triple check that they had never done a movie together before. Chris Evans in particular seems to be pulling together his character from Knives Out while still relying on his proficiency with action scenes. And the action has the same combination of fun, comprehensible, but without stakes that has come to define the superhero genre.
Red One exists in a universe where there is right and wrong, and the film tries to reconcile how that can exist, while still seeing the best in people who at times choose wrong. It’s not quite Christianity, but it’s surprisingly close, and perfectly serviceable for a popcorn movie.
For many years there have been two types of Christmas movies as earnest as Red One, family films and Hallmark romances. This is another kind. This is a movie feels like the set up for a cinematic universe that will one day have the Easter Bunny fighting for a magic rock that if taken by the Boogeyman will hurt all the children of earth.
Yes, it’s all a bit ridiculous. And it’s odd to have a good hearted Christmas movie that is definitely not for kids. But that’s what this is. There’s too much drinking, swearing, and violence for the young ones, but it’s certainly worthy of a date night. I didn’t take my wife to see this one, and I wish I had, we would have had some good laughs. (Admittedly some at the film’s expense.)
Three out of five stars. Red One opened in theaters nationwide November 15, 2024. It comes to streaming on Amazon Prime today, December 12.
