by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Jake Kasdan
CAST: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, J.K. Simmons
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 30%
PLOT: After Santa Claus is kidnapped, the North Pole’s Head of Security must team up with a notorious hacker in a globe-trotting mission to (all together now) save Christmas.
Jake Kasdan’s Red One is by no means perfect, but it is not nearly as bad as the plethora of negative reviews would have you believe. The Rotten Tomatoes website lists such jabs as:
- “…forgettable as a first dusting of snow.”
- “…offers big-budget visuals but lacks soul…”
- And my favorite: “An ugly, under-lit, joyless slog, devoid of any holiday charm or sense of fun.”
Let me first address that “under-lit” comment. I first attempted to watch this movie at our local AMC cineplex, and I noticed that the ads and previews were so dim that parts of the screen looked almost black. I petitioned the manager to adjust the projector settings twice, but to no avail. (“That projector has been giving us problems for two weeks.”) When the movie started and it was just as dark as the previews, I gave it up as a lost cause, left and got a refund, and streamed it on Prime instead, and on our big-screen HD TV, presto, no more under-lit areas. Everything was perfectly visible, clear, and bright. So, it’s entirely possible that that reviewer’s issue with the screen being “under-lit” could have been a projector issue, and NOT a problem with the film itself. Just wanted to throw that in there.
As far as those other negative comments go, well, I don’t know what kind of mindset those folks were in as they watched Red One, but it’s difficult for me to comprehend how anyone could call it “joyless.” I found it charming and funny myself. But then, when it comes to holiday movies, I have always been partial to the ones that attempt to provide logical solutions to the massive logistical problems involved in getting one man to travel the entire globe in a single night, delivering presents to every household that’s waiting for them.
For example, in The Polar Express, we are treated to a semi-industrial North Pole that runs like clockwork and (thanks to convenient time dilation) can get everything into Santa’s sleigh so he can dash away just before midnight. Red One ups that ante right from the get-go.
After he has taken a brief holiday in the city – masquerading as, of course, a mall Santa – the real Santa Claus, call sign “Red One” (J.K. Simmons), is driven to the nearest military airbase in an armored limo with a motorcade escort. Accompanying him is his Chief of Security, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson)…because of course the real Santa would have a bodyguard. It just makes sense. Then, at the airbase, under blacked-out radar coverage, Santa’s state-of-the-art sleigh, powered by eight gigantic reindeer and carefully monitored by NORAD, takes off for the North Pole with a fighter jet escort.
I dunno, man, I just ate this stuff up with a spoon. The imagination and attention to detail that went into creating this version of the Santa mythology brought a smile to my face for pretty much the entire movie. Another example: I mentioned to my girlfriend that this version of Santa Claus is not very fat, which is usually a given. But then there’s a scene where Santa lifts weights in a gym as Drift spots him, and I thought, okay, I can buy that. Santa needed to drop a few pounds. It sounds absurd writing it out like that, but I’m telling you, for me it all made sense.
So, like I said, right away I was on board with the logistics of the story. Then the real plot kicks in when Santa is kidnapped under everyone’s noses by a gang of bad guys who manage to infiltrate the North Pole’s highly sophisticated defensive measures. The only way Drift and his colleagues will have a chance of retrieving Santa before Christmas Eve is with the help of Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a talented but amoral tech genius who claims he can track down anyone, anywhere, anytime.
There’s the usual backstory of Jack’s son who lives with his mother and her husband, and Jack was never father material to begin with, but the son is going to play in a concert on Christmas Eve, and so on. I’m not saying this material is irrelevant, but for me it was secondary to my enjoyment of how the filmmakers were treating all the mythological/fantasy/sci-fi material. We get talking polar bears [not the Golden Compass kind, the Zootopia kind], murderous snowmen who are seemingly invincible, tech gadgets that turn Matchbox cars into full-size vehicles [I want one!], a whole new use for Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and we even get to meet Santa’s brother. Yep…his brother.
I mention all these details because they are what I responded to mostly during the film. The plot? The plot is, let’s face it, standard thriller fare, with a reasonably interesting big-bad and hidden connections and a few surprises, but because the filmmakers went to such great lengths to provide a fascinating backstory for all the mythological characters and how the North Pole is organized logistically, I didn’t particularly care if the story was perhaps shallow and mildly predictable to anyone who has seen more than 10 movies in their lives. I’m not ashamed to admit it.
But because of how the filmmakers were telling the story this time around, I just ate it up. Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans are a decent screen pairing. Bonnie Hunt as Mrs. Claus was a treat. Lucy Liu was perhaps the most wasted of the entire cast, although she does get one very brief kicking-ass scene. The motive behind Santa’s kidnapping was credible. There was nothing in the movie that broke its own set of rules, which is more than I can say of quite a few would-be thrillers out there.
Heck, I’m just gonna say it: Red One is the Galaxy Quest of Christmas movies. You either buy into the preposterous, but logically sound, premise and laugh for a while, or you don’t. As for me, I’ll be watching this one again next Christmas. Or maybe sooner.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 