Movie Review: 'Red One'

“Red One” desperately wants to be an “edgy” Christmas movie. Edgy Christmas movies throughout history have included everything from raunchy comedies (“Bad Santa,” “The Ref”) to intense action (“Fatman,” “Violent Night”) to straight-up horror (“Black Christmas,” “Silent Night, Deadly Night”). When edgy movies turn Christmas on its head just right, they can become blockbusters and classics like “Home Alone” or “Die Hard.” When they fail, well, they’ll do whatever “Red One” is going to do at the box office because this movie is a big miss.

The heroes of “Red One” are security chief Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) and hacker Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans). Callum works for the one and only Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons), and both love delivering presents to the good people of the world. But Cal has become jaded and lost passion for his work. It’s not that he doesn’t love being around Santa and his positive energy, he just thinks that the world has become overrun by people like Jack. Jack is a deadbeat dad, an unscrupulous hacker, and – given that he literally steals candy from a baby in the film’s opening moments – a total sociopath. I know the point is to show that this character needs the redemption that he’ll earn through the rest of the movie, but after he does that, I wasn’t rooting for him to earn anything besides a prison cell.

Despite Callum’s best efforts, Santa gets kidnapped by evil witch Gryla (Kiernan Shipka). Callum’s boss Harlow (Lucy Liu) learns that Jack did some hacking in relation to the abduction, and orders him brought in for questioning. The civilian gets a peek at the M.O.R.A. (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), which hints at the start of a cinematic universe that I doubt will ever be expanded.

Jack doesn’t know who exactly was paying him, but middleman Ted (Nick Kroll) might. Cal reluctantly escorts Jack to Aruba to follow the lead. The scenes in Aruba last about five minutes, yet I suspect that about $200 million of this film’s reported $250 million cost was spent there. The money sure didn’t go toward making the movie decent, I can assure you of that.

Jack and Cal eventually have to visit Santa’s brother (Kristofer Hivju) for more information. The film builds suspense around the identity of the brother, and I was like, “Krampus, right?” The movie treats the answer like some kind of big reveal, but I was more shocked that Benedict Cumberbatch in “Star Trek Into Darkness” wasn’t playing a guy named Harrison.

Jack and Cal make a pair of unlikely partners as they race to save Santa by Christmas. There are chases and fights and hustles and one-liners, barely any of which are funny and none of which are exciting. The action scenes are all murky and cheap, and Gryla is one of the most underwhelming villains in recent memory. Somewhere along the way, Jack gets the redemption he needs and Cal learns to see the good he needs to see – which means he’s not watching this movie.

Since “Red One” is all about the season of giving, I’ll give the movie a gift and boost it above a “D” rating. The reason is simple: J.K. Simmons. The Oscar-winner is primarily responsible for the one good scene in the movie, where Santa and Cal debate the necessity of generosity in an increasingly-cruel world. And I guess some of the tricks Santa uses to visit houses all over the world are cute – like wormholes, transformation technology, and military escorts (“Red One” refers to the sleigh, by the way). But the movie spends a good 90% of its runtime in “D” territory. The better edgy Christmas movie of 2024 was “Terrifier 3,” and it’ll be a Christmas miracle if that one stays in theaters much longer.

Grade: C-

“Red One” is rated PG-13 for action, some violence, and language. Its running time is 123 minutes.

Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.