Red One
★ ★ ★ ½
“Red One” is a pretty fun film to watch, even though it follows the standard action-comedy beats and never really colors outside the lines. It’s formulaic and paint-by-numbers, but it still manages to be entertaining and enjoyable.
It’s also pretty dumb in many parts – something I was surprisingly okay with. There’s a sequence on a beach where the action is so campy and corny, I started to groan and roll my eyes, but quickly found myself enjoying it. And that’s this movie in a nutshell: dumb, campy and just plain fun.
J.K. Simmons as Nick and Dwayne Johnson as Callum Drift
© 2024 Amazon MGM Studios
Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) uses his investigative skills to track people and items for the highest bidder, often working with the criminal underworld. In this story, he breaks into a seismology lab and points his current employer to an anomaly near the North Pole.
At the North Pole, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) works as the head of security to protect Nick (J.K. Simmons), aka Santa Clause. The protection detail for Nick is very similar to the Secret Service, with Nick’s security codename being “Red One.”
Lucy Liu interrogates Chris Evans
© 2024 Amazon MGM Studios
It’s 48 hours to Christmas, and Callum has just turned in his resignation letter after several hundred years of service. In the North Pole, you live a long time. Callum has been having misgivings about how terrible people have become as adults and how the season has lost meaning for him. Though Nick doesn’t want to let him go, he reluctantly accepts the resignation.
Jack’s discovery leads to Nick’s abduction, and it doesn’t take Callum and the head of security, Zoe (Lucy Liu), long to track him down, bring him to a North Pole holding facility and interrogate him.
Snow monsters on the beach
© 2024 Amazon MGM Studios
Zoe ultimately hires Jack to help Callum track down Nick, offering double his usual fee. Jack agrees, and he and Callum embark on a journey to find Nick and save Christmas.
Standing in their way is Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), an Icelandic witch who wants to imprison the world’s population in life-sized snow globes. Again, dumb – but fun.
Of course, there’s a family element to this film. Olivia (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), Jack’s ex-girlfriend and the mother to his son, Dylan (Wesley Kimmel), wants Jack to be more present in Dylan’s life. Jack has avoided this, believing his limited interaction with his son would be better for him.
When you mix all this together, you get a fun time at the movies. Whether it’s anything more than that goes beyond what this film is intended to be. It has a certain confidence in its goofy script – and it pretty much works.
Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans
© 2024 Amazon MGM Studios
I have my doubts as to whether “Red One” will become a Christmas classic, but I really enjoyed watching it and might fire it up from time to time on the streaming service.
My advice? Try not to think too hard about the plot. Sit back and enjoy this action-comedy in all its silliness.
Running Time: 2h 2m
Directed by: Jake Kasdan
Written by: Chris Morgan
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, J.K. Simmons, Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Kristofer Hivju, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Wesley Kimmel
Holiday, Action, Adventure, Comedy
