Review of Red One

Just what some of us needed: a Christmas action-adventure movie. Not all of us need it, tho.

So I saw “Red One,” a Christmas action-adventure comedy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu and J.K. Simmons as Saint Nicholas of Myra, commonly known to Americans as Santa Claus. Simmons is the right age to play Santa, an older gentleman, but he doesn't have the physique you associate with The Jolly One. This Saint Nick is slim and in shape - he bench presses hundreds of pounds. He’s not the guy with the few extra pounds around his belly that raise questions about how he squeezes down all those chimneys. Lots of other things have been updated as well. The reindeer are about 12 feet tall, the sleigh bears more than a passing resemblance to a high-performance sports car, and at one point Santa gets an escort from fighter jets. It’s very silly, comfortably bordering on being patently ridiculous. It cozily wanders the line between deliciously absurd and deeply stupid.

I loved it. 

Johnson has the gift of knowing how just seriously to present himself. In this case, his character, Callum Drift takes his role as the leader of ELF (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification) very seriously. He’s Santa’s bodyguard, a job he’s had for 542 years. Just writing “542 years” makes me laugh, because it’s just so absurd. There’s no explanation for why he’s been doing it for this long, or even what he is, apart from the fact that he’s not a mortal human. We never really find out what he is - we’re just supposed to accept it. Which I did, because Johnson does a great job of convincing me that I’m going to have a good time if I suspend disbelief and don’t ask questions. He’s not an elf, that’s for sure! But he’s had enough - he’s retiring, because he just can’t see the kids in the adults any more. If you don’t get any joy out of working for Santa Claus, you probably shouldn’t be working for Santa Claus. He and Santa have a nice exchange about this, which ends up being about the meaning of Christmas. It’s just sentimental enough to give a little bit of depth to what would otherwise be a featherweight of a movie in terms of meaning. It’s a small fraction of the heartwarming moments found in a Hallmark or Lifetime movie, but just enough for this.

Santa is kidnapped just before Christmas Eve. Zoe (Lucy Liu), director of MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), and Johnson’s boss, hires Jack “The Wolf” O’Malley (Evans) to track him down, because he’s the best tracker in the world. Problem is, Mr. O’Malley’s ethics and scruples are not really compatible with those of the North Pole Complex. Because people in the North Pole Complex HAVE ethics and scruples, and you get the feeling that Jack considers those professionally and personally contingent, at best. You know that old saying, “stealing candy from a baby?” The kind of thing only low-life scum would even consider? Guess what Jack does, just for fun. He sees the rules of society not as guidelines to be followed, but challenges to be bent, broken, or twisted. And he seems to be very good at it. How good? At the North Pole he learns - from a 10 foot tall polar bear named Garcia - that he is an NL4 - a Level 4 Naughty Lister. Yes, he’s on THAT LIST. Boy, has Santa been watching him! I don’t know how many levels are on the Naughty List, but Level 4 is clearly very bad. It’s almost surprising that there isn’t a subplot of him getting coal in his stocking. He can be a responsible adult, as long as it's in his best interest to be so. He just doesn’t think that happens very often. Don Corleone had higher ethical standards than Jack.

Callum and Jack, being complete opposites in terms of the degree of honesty and integrity each has, as well as their general outlook on life, are naturally forced to work together. Buddy Comedy 101: they start out hating each other. Also Buddy Comedy 101: they’re going to end up trusting and respecting each other. This is so standard I am giving nothing away. Also, non-spoiler alert #2: the good guys win in the end. I’m telling you this in case you were worrying about whether or not the good guys do, in fact, win in the end, because you shouldn’t. That would mean taking this movie seriously, which, again, you shouldn’t.

At one point Callum and Jack have to break into the house of Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), sort of a Christmas demon (Krampus is actually part of Christmas lore in some European countries). It’s guarded by hellhounds. Callum pulls something out of his pocket, and does something to it with a magical gauntlet on his forearm that animates things. It becomes a chicken. He says to the chicken, “Ellen, we need you to distract them,” whereupon Ellen the chicken dutifully runs around screaming and distracting the hellhounds. An intelligent chicken named Ellen distracting hellhounds is not part of any Christmas story I know of. This is what I mean by wandering the line between deliciously absurd and deeply stupid. Where this and other scenes land with respect to that line may depend on the individual tastes of the viewer. I like to think that my degree in philosophy gives me license to appreciate finely calibrated stupidity. That’s an important life skill. 

A cynic with a heart of gold hidden underneath a scarred exterior who has an epiphany and a change of heart after being exposed to the Christmas spirit, and maybe something magical, is a story as old as Dickens. Maybe as old as St. Nick himself. This version updates the story with lots of CGI, jokes about contemporary dietary fads (Santa eats cookies because he has to “carb up” - he burns 430 million calories delivering all those presents), and Gryla, an evil witch (Kiernan Shipka) who - of course - has an evil plan for world domination. It also provides us with a fight scene involving apparently indestructible evil snowmen who use snowflakes as deadly weapons. This is a nice touch - I have never seen apparently indestructible evil snowmen before. It takes place on a beach in Aruba. Why there? So they can show women in bikinis (and some well-sculpted guys in board shorts). This was so transparently an attempt to appeal to people like me (you know, straight guys) that I had to laugh. The silliness is a good counter to the objectification.

I didn’t take it very seriously, because how can you? But I took it just seriously enough to let myself believe in a little Christmas magic. Callum uses toy store storerooms to travel around the world, because apparently they’re portals to some kind of North Pole transportation system. I worked in a toy store, and I didn’t know this! I could have used our storeroom to go on vacation to someplace exotic and exciting! Or maybe I could have used it to go home and avoid paying airfare! And I worked in a small indie toy store in Washington, DC, called The Red Balloon. It was a very cool toy store, exactly the kind that would have had a secret portal in its storeroom just for Santa’s helpers. But I wasn’t part of Santa’s super-secret organization, which explains why I didn’t have access to this portal system. 

If I’m finding myself fantasizing about what it would be like to be part of this movie’s world, it’s working for me.