Film Review - Red One (2024)

Red One stars Dwayne Johnson as Callum Drift the head of Santa’s (JK Simmons) secret security unit known as ELF, one night however Santa is kidnapped by an evil witch (Kiernan Shipka) and he along with Zoe (Lucy Liu) track down a hacker (Chris Evans) who might be able to help save Santa and Christmas.

Red One is definitely a lump of coal of coal in the Christmas stocking and it will also make you want to pull an Alan Rickman from Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and say “CALL OFF CHRISTMAS” because this movie is so deathly dull to sit through, it is extraordinary that Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans two actors with charm, likeability and charisma to spare are so boring to watch here.

Johnson looks and sounds like a man who is going through the motions like the failure of Black Adam in 2022 just took all of that winning charm out of him and he’s just been sore about it ever since while Evans once again is trying to say to everyone “SEE I’M NOT CAPTAIN AMERICA ANYMORE, DUMB ASS” as once again he plays a slimy smartass and it really doesn’t work here, it did work in the first Knives Out film in 2019 but that film had Rian Johnson in the directors chair and he knows how to direct actors whereas Jake Kasdan who directed this movie just tells everyone to stand still, hit their marks, say their lines and he’ll put all the winter wonderland scenery in during post.

Speaking of the visual look of this movie, it is so horrible due to that trademark murky digital camera grey that we see more and more and let me remind you all this movie HAD A HIGHER BUDGET THAN DUNE PART TWO and not once did it show on the screen and between this and Joker Folie a Deux having the same budget as Dune Part Two I am getting sick to death of this recklessness in budgetary spending.

A movie like Dune Part Two having a big budget I understand because that film was the follow on to a well liked film that won multiple Academy Awards, made money at the box office despite being available day and date on streaming/piracy and was very well liked by critics and audiences for the most part.

James Cameron getting the budgetary equivalent of the United States Federal Reserve to make his Avatar sequels also makes sense because Cameron has 3 of the top 4 biggest movies of all time worldwide and 2 of those are from a group of films that so many love to say “has no cultural impact” and that budget will be made back in spades.

But what should be a fun lighthearted Christmas family comedy having a 250 million dollar budget is gross recklessness and irresponsibility of the highest order and to quote Kevin Rudd “This Sort of Reckless Spending Must Stop.”

As for the storytelling here well it’s the usual Christmas cheer, broken families, naughty person learning to be nice again and reconciling with his long lost son, fairly standard stuff but it all just bored me after a while because it’s all been done so much better elsewhere.

And so that was Red One and Bah Humbug from me on this one because this is a movie that does not in any way justify its huge budget and it suffers because of it, 1 out of 5.