Movie Reviews // Red One

Red One is the cynical, fascistic holiday movie we all deserve to find under the tree this year. It’s 2024 and gone is the jolly, fat, twinkling Santa of old. Instead, this film offers an ultra-fit Santa (played by J.K. Simmons) with an army of bodyguards headed by the “Extremely. Large and Formidable” Callum Drift (played by Dwayne Johnson).

Santa’s North Pole operation is run by stressed out minions under an ineffectual force field dome. The minions orchestrate the “magical” one night a year when Santa belays on a rope from his sleigh into chimneys around the world, tucking and rolling, while delivering presents as his crew observes from their military-esque bunker.

Viewers are introduced to Santa in a mall in Philly where he is soon escorted by US fighter jets back to the North Pole. A picture should be emerging here, and its grim. Santa is quickly and very easily kidnapped by a witch (played by Kiernan Shipka) who quite literally seizes the means of production.

The E.L.F, which actually stands for Enforcement, Logistics, and Fortification sets out to rescue him. Head of Security, Drift, is forced to reluctantly team up with a degenerate gambler and skilled tracker, Jack O’ Malley (played by Christ Evans) who is level 4 on the “Naughty List”, in order to retrieve Santa.

This film is riddled with bad green screen shots. It doesn’t add anything to the IMAX viewing experience. It feels like the action sequences are 80% terrible green screen. The acting is all one note, and the characters are two dimensional. There are plenty of wise cracks, but few of them land. Even the fake snow is paltry and sad.

The director made the inexplicable choice to give Drift the power to shrink himself down Ant Man-style while retaining his strength for fight scenes. It must have sounded cool in the writer’s room, but it did not translate well to screen.

The best parts of this film were the scenes with Santa’s brother, Krampus (played by Kristofer HIvju) who brought some much-needed levity and wit to this movie. Hopefully, if this becomes a franchise, as something this ridiculous inevitably will–Krampus will feature.

I want to predict that this film will not be a holiday classic, but if November has taught us anything, it’s to never bet against how much America loves its fascism. The bloated budget for this film was $250 Million and it was absolutely put toward hiring big name actors (who didn’t earn their paychecks, with the exception of Nick Kroll, who gave it his all and then some) and not toward production value. What a disappointment.

The filmmakers had the opportunity to make an edgy, heartwarming holiday film and they blew it on propaganda shots for the US military, shots of hordes of women in Aruba in impossibly small bikinis, and long monologues by Dwayne Johnson about how people are increasingly terrible—which is the only thing that felt authentic in the end. The movie spends so much time showing the audience how awful everyone has become and very little showing any sort of redemption for humanity. Santa’s seeming unwavering love for humanity rings hollow, as does this film.