Why not make a Christmas-themed action flick starring Dwayne Johnson as Kris Kringle’s chief bodyguard? The answer to that question is revealed in “Red One” (Amazon MGM).
The attempt to put Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) in the middle of a lot of frenetic brawling and then wrap the whole thing up with a climactic sleigh chase leads to a hopelessly unbalanced tone in this ill-conceived holiday offering. Despite a conversion story for one of the main characters, moreover, this is far too hard-edged a production to be in any way family-friendly.
After St. Nick is kidnapped, Johnson’s Callum Drift and his team trace the breach of North Pole security that enabled the abduction to gifted but mercenary internet hacker Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans). Since cynical Jack has, since childhood, denied the very existence of the Jolly One, however, it soon becomes clear that, for all his moral shortcomings, he was acting inadvertently.
Belatedly realizing what a catastrophe he’s helped bring about, Jack agrees to help Callum and his boss, Zoe (Lucy Liu), catch the real culprit. But straight-arrow Callum has taken an instant dislike to this shady scoundrel, and only agrees to team with him under orders from Zoe. So the newly-minted odd couple take up the chase.
Clues eventually lead them to one of Santa’s long-standing adversaries, a shape-shifting witch called Gryla (Kiernan Shipka). With Santa neutralized, she plans to ruin the impending holiday by punishing every person on his naughty list. Needless to say, that means a host of potential victims around the world.
The mayhem Gryla’s nefarious plot unleashes remains thoroughly stylized throughout and the values put forward in an almost preachy way by Chris Morgan’s script are respectable from a Judeo-Christian perspective. Thus Gryla is about retribution, but Santa, who sees the inner child in even the most wayward grown-up, is about mercy and forbearance.
As for Jack, isn’t it high time he worked on being a better father to his mildly misbehaving son, Dylan (Wesley Kimmel)? The lad’s mom, Olivia (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) – to whom, we learn, Jack was never married – certainly thinks so.
All well and good. Yet, cinematically, director Jake Kasdan never finds his footing. Nor does it seem likely that he ever could have, since early scenes alternately set in Aruba and at the site of Santa’s captivity may have viewers of a certain age imagining the effect of Father Christmas wandering into an episode of “Miami Vice.”
To put it another way, Dasher and Dashiell Hammett simply do not mix.
Additionally, “Red One” is a good reminder that not every Yuletide movie is geared toward youngsters. In this case, the screenplay’s vulgar vocabulary, while certainly not excessive by Hollywood standards, does flag the proceedings as strictly off-limits for kids.
The film contains considerable bloodless violence, fleeting partial nudity, references to a character’s out-of-wedlock birth, about a dozen instances each of mild swearing and crude language, at least one rough term and a couple of crass expressions. The OSV News classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
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