By Marc S. Sanders
Santa Claus has been kidnapped. It’s up to Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans to rescue him before Lucy Liu has to explain to all the Presidents and Prime Ministers across the world that there might not be a Christmas. It’s one thing to read this as pertinent information. It’s another to say it out loud with a straight face. I’m now convinced that Lucy Liu is the most amazing actress of all time. Not a curve, not a wrinkle, not a twitch in her stoic expression. Still, I believe Christmas is going to happen.
Yes, ol’ St. Nick (J.K. Simmons) has been captured. His bodyguard is Cal (Dwayne Johnson), also head of security at the North Pole. He is determined to get the bearded man in red back before Christmas Eve, and he partners up with a petty computer hacker mastermind, lacking any Christmas spirit, named Jack (Chris Evans). The guys will argue with each other before they connect as buddies. You know how this works. They’ll follow the leads to find out who and why “Red One” was taken.
Red One works as a fun action picture with pretty cool and imaginative visuals like I’d count on from director/writer Jake Kasdan, son of Lawrence. As a Christmas movie though? It needs a lot more tinsel.
J.K. Simmons is not a conventional fat man Santa with a jolly “Ho Ho Ho.” This dude is a weightlifter and, well, he talks like the guy from Whiplash and those Spider-Man movies. Pair him up with the bruising Dwayne Johnson and this Santa is the morose police captain who would sit behind a desk, handing out the next Lethal Weapon assignment.
The director of security is played by Lucy Liu, dressed in a black starched pantsuit, stressing the urgency of the problem. Like the rest of the cast, save Evans, she takes Christmas way serious and that’s where the problem lies with Red One. It’s not gleeful or celebratory of the holiday. When she warns us that Christmas may not come, how am I supposed to respond to such a dire consequence? Should I be scared? Am I supposed to laugh or cry? When Doc Brown told Marty McFly he may be erased from existence, well you know that was pretty heavy (and not as trivial as something wrong with the gravitational pull of the earth). When Lucy Liu and The Rock talk about NO CHRISTMAS of all things, I gotta wonder if I’ll get my annual Chinese dinner with my Jewish family. Red One feels like a cliffhanger episode of NCIS. Even Die Hard was more in line with the Christmas spirit than this flick. John McClane declared his “Ho Ho Ho!” when he got a machine gun. No one in this movie seems to have a sense of humor. Chris Evans cracks some one-liners as if he’s shying away from the hokey script that everyone else embraces like a Tom Clancy novel.
What works in Red One is the visual imagery of a wicked Christmas witch and assorted trolls and monster mayhem, particularly from Krampus (Santa’s gholish beast of a brother played by Kristofer Hivju) who gives a hilarious beatdown on The Rock. There’s also a cute way to disarm some beastly polar bears who can encase our heroes in ice. The designs of the North Pole look cool as an industrial military base specializing in toy manufacturing. However, we could have seen some cool gadgetry with this factory. Instead, there’s a lot of underground mazes to circumvent that we barely get a look at amid the fast pace of the action scenes.
Cal is gifted with a power wristlet that packs a punch, shrinks him down for fighting advantages and has the ability to turn Hot Wheels cars into life size Chevrolet products for quick travel. Naturally, Cal also knows that storage closets found in any toy store will transport you to another part of the world. Nifty! Not holiday spirited though.
The chases and fights work. Johnson and Evans make for an okay buddy cop kind of pair. The designs of the movie hold. Yet, what’s missing is a spirit of Christmas magic. Again, the holiday of Santa with his magical reindeer and cookies and stockings all feel hollow here. Something is definitely missing because it’s hard for me to pinpoint who this film is catered for. Families? Red One comes off too nihilistic for that crowd ready to enjoy everyone’s comfort during winter break. It’s too hokey just for the adults or the action movie lover. A threat of Santa Claus missing with Christmas at risk also seems too overwhelming for the under 8 crowd.
I got a kick at everything I saw on screen but there’s no one to connect with or empathize, and even for this Jewish guy, there’s an absence of Christmas tidings to behold from music to decor to the common recognizable tropes. Even when Santa poses as a shopping mall iteration, Simmons’ tough guy exterior doesn’t lend to any sort of joy or whimsy that comes with the holiday.
The sad irony is that Cal wants to retire because he sees more pessimism and materialistic selfishness in the adults these days. Santa tries to convince Cal to reconsider as the spirit of the holiday will return. If that’s true, then St Nick with a J. Jonah Jameson disposition does not offer much promise.
These guys are rescuing Santa Claus like they are rescuing the President Of The United States, and frankly who the hell has liked any of the Presidents Of The United States of late?
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 