Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Red One’ on Amazon Prime Video, Where The Rock and Chris Evans Team Up To Save A Super-Shredded Santa From Evil CGI Snowmen

Alternate titles for Red One (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) could be Santa’s Bodyguard or The Kidnapping of Kris Kringle, although they’d more likely tip us off as to how dopey and annoying this action flick is. Good thing it’s headlined by thee master of dopey and annoying ackshun flicks, then: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson lords over this something-for-everyone movie, which cost a quarter-billion to make – $50 mil of which went to its star – and didn’t make nearly that much at the box office. So it goes. Mr. Rock plays the head of Santa Claus’ crack high-tech security team, who’s tasked with fighting off evildoers, rescuing the big guy and – yes, of course – saving Christmas. The superstar actor co-stars with Chris Evans, Lucy Liu and J.K. Simmons, and re-teams with his two-time Jumanji director Jake Kasdan, which pretty much tells us what to expect: glossy CGI, nut shots and probably the violentest Christmas movie at least since Violent Night. Should be fun for the whole family, then, right? Theoretically. 

RED ONE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: I won’t even describe the cold open, because it’s superfluous and should have been dumpster’d immediately. There, just knocked five minutes off this blubbery two-hour-plus hunk of digital celluloid. It offers a meaningless glimpse into what made Jack O’Malley (Evans) a cynical butthead who litters, steals others’ coffee orders, sports-gambles himself into the red, works as a freelance hacker for crooks and is a deadbeat dad. Would be a shame if he stayed this way and didn’t morally orient himself by the end of the movie, which is so very very far away, it might as well be on the North Pole. 

Speaking of which. There’s a whole sequence functioning as an intro to Santa (Simmons) and his serious-as-a-911-call bodyguard Callum Drift (Johnson) that also could be lopped off the runtime, because it’s a bit of a bridge too far to suggest that The Actual Santa Claus would take the time two days before the big’un to park himself on a plastic throne in a mall and hear out kids’ demands for bloody violent video games. Guess he likes to stay in touch with his roots? I mean, he has a whole complex operation to run up north, hidden beneath a cloaking dome that hides a bustling urban city beneath a facade depicting a placid winter landscape. Elves that look more than vaguely like Baby Yodas bustle hither and thither, Mrs. Claus (Bonnie Hunt) oversees some things, Zoe Harlow (Liu) is the Tommy Lee Jones henhouse-outhouse-icehouse order-barker around here and is that a walking talking polar bear over yonder? Yes it is. Guess we shouldn’t be surprised that it takes a high-tech army of humans and mythical creatures to prep and deliver presents to every child in the entire goddamn world.

At this point, we learn that Santa is shredded, and counts his macros. Gotta be in shape to go down billions of chimneys, and all the carbs and fat from the cookies and milk get burned off right quick. But rock-hard lats are of no use when a secret crew of buttmongers busts into the Pole HQ and snatches him on Xmas Eve, leaving the holiday in peril. This is where Cal has to step up and punch some dudes and chase some dudes and find out what dudes are responsible for this nastiness. First name on this particular naughty list? Jack O’frickinMalley, who busted into some computers and leaked the intel to an anonymous party for a quick payday. And so Cal and Jack become mismatched rivals-slash-buddies tasked with rescuing Santa, hopefully just in the Nick of time (apologies) before Christmas is ruined. Chaos continues to reign!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Red One is the last coupla Jumanjis and Jungle Cruise meets Rise of the Guardians, The Polar Express and Krampus. Yes, it’s as messy as all that implies.

Performance Worth Watching: You’ll sit there hoping for someone here to steal a scene or fire off a laughworthy one-liner, but you might as well be waiting for Godot. So let’s just acknowledge Kiernan Shipka – who plays the villain here – for notching an interesting year in her career, with parts in Longlegs, underrated rom-com Sweethearts and this thing, which garbs her up in a platinum-blonde wig and CGI eyeballs, because nothing in this damn movie made it through digital touch-ups intact.

Memorable Dialogue: I’ve replaced the word “Cal” in the following exchange with “the movie Red One”: 

Jack: Not a lot of fun, are you (the movie Red One)?

(The movie Red One): I’m a lot of fun.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Here’s what $250 million gets you: An uninspired dead-serious Dwayne Johnson performance that foregoes his usual wink-at-the-camera charms. Piles of digital-vomit CGI. A deadass script. Very little resembling Christmas joy. And so much plot, it makes the film look like an overfilled garbage can that’s one Dorito crumb away from splotting coffee grounds and banana peels all over the tile: You’ve got Cal’s the-joy-is-gone/one-day-from-retirement character arc (he’s been on the job for 542 years!), Jack’s attempt to reconnect with his son (which involves a race against time to get to the kid’s Christmas recital, of course), a slap fight with Santa’s goat-man half-brother Krampus (played in mo-cap by Game of Thrones guy Kristofer Hivju), a MacGuffin chase (it’s a magic snow globe), violent shenanigans in Aruba with towering snowman henchmen (are they abominable? You betcha) and some scenery nibbling by Shipka’s big-bad Gryla the Evil Icelandic Christmas Witch (who is indeed a real figure from myth). And the cherry on top of this mess? Egregious product placement! (Let’s just say that between this and Heretic, Monopoly is having quite the year.)

Red One begins and ends in a generally acceptable manner, with a little wit up front and a bit of cleverness on the back end, although reaching the denouement requires gutting out the heaps of dreck preceding it, from the cast’s rampant paycheck-cashing to a bevy of deeply ugly green-screen set pieces. The movie not only looks like shit, but it deploys the word “shit” enough times that parents plopping grade-schoolers down for some holiday merriment might purse their lips and side-eye the damn thing – this is the type of script that believes a character exclaiming “What in the actual fu-” only to be cut off by a slam edit is funny, and not a submoronic cliche that should be banished to the blackened void of Krampus’ gaseous bowels. There’s a moment here where the Rock puffs out his chest at a creep and says, “Listen dickhead, it’s Christmas,” which is essentially how the movie is selling itself to you. And you therefore have every right to knee it in the nards.

Our Call: Naughty list? Nah. Red One belongs on an entirely different list. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.