The New Movie of the Week: Red One

Callum “Cal” Drift (Dwayne Johnson), the head commander of Santa Clause’s Enforcement Logistics and Fortification team tasked with St. Nick’s safety, requests to retire making this his last Christmas with “Red One”.  He has become disillusioned by the humans in the world not caring and the fact that the “Naughty List” is now longer than the “Nice List”.  Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a mercenary black-hat hacker who has a penchant for being able to find anything in the world, is hired to hack into a seismic system and unknowingly reveals the secret location of Santa Claus’s north pole location and an operative team breaks through the workshop’s defenses and kidnaps Santa.  Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu) is the head of M.O.R.A the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority, a multilateral military organization that oversees and protects the “mythological world”.  Zoe and Cal track down and capture Jack, persuading him to help find Santa Clause and save Christmas. Their journey takes them to Aruba where they fight snowmen on the beach and to Eastern Europe where they fight Santa’s brother, Krampus, all of which are leading them to the real creature behind the kidnapping with a diabolical plan to rid the world of everyone who has ever been naughty.  Jack and Cal must learn to work together to find “Red One” in time for Christmas Eve.

Red One is a 2024 American action-adventure Christmas buddy comedy film and was released in theatres on November 15, 2024. The film was originally intended for a Prime Video release on December 20, 2023, but due to the SAG-AFTRA strike it was postponed and was also given a theatrical release instead of streaming. The film has received generally negative reviews with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 4.4 / 10 based on 145 critics and Metacritic is assigning the film a 34 / 100 based on 35 critics.  But the audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave it an A- rating and those polled by PostTrak gave it a 78% positive score. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian describes the film as “profoundly depressing and blandly sentimental” and concluding “this commercial and formulaic slice of content is a toy destined to be forgotten, not by Boxing Day, but mid-November.”  But Deadline Hollywood’s Glenn Garner says that the film “blends genres for some family-friendly holiday fun with a generous dose of self-aware absurdity…Yes, it’s cheesy, but this movie is best when it leans heavily into the cheese. If that makes your eyes roll, keep in mind this is a Christmas movie ultimately intended for kids who’ve made it all the way through the MCU on Disney+ twice and their parents now need a reprieve. There are still some jokes aimed at the cold-hearted adult who will inevitably be dragged along on the family cinema outing.” Giving us both ends of the spectrum on what the critics thought.

I am with Glenn on this one! I went into this film expecting it to be terrible, but it was actually funny, with some corny campy humor and over the top sappy dialogue that is just perfect for an action-adventure Christmas comedy aimed at kids with some humor thrown in for the adults.  No one is going to win any awards for this movie, but I enjoyed J.K. Simmons as a muscled, weightlifting, Santa who is sentimental and still sees the joy of the holiday.  He has an edge but is still jovial and wise.  Dwayne a.k.a. The Rock, is what he is, and what he will probably always be.  He does a decent job as the overly serious head of security and handles the dramatic bits competently with some good comic timing.  Chris Evans as Jack is funny and charismatic, playing the bad boy hustler who has a gift to see everyone’s flaws and knows how to exploit them.  Chris and Dwayne make a pretty good team and throw in Lucy Liu for good measure, and you have a movie that doesn’t pretend to be anything that it isn’t, just pure brain-dead fun!  I am not sure this movie will make enough to warrant any follow-ups, but now that they have established a world with Mythological creatures in it (special appearance by the headless horseman for example), it could be interesting to explore storylines involving the other holidays.  In the end, I went into this movie not expecting much, and got what I was expecting, just a really entertaining and fun movie that doesn’t try to be too overly serious, but it does have some heart!