What if you took the mythology of Santa Claus and turned it into a Marvel movie?
Well, that gives you an insight into this movie.
But don't let that be a turn off if you're burned out on Marvel.
It's a feel good family film for the holiday season. If your family is OK with people saying words like "bullshit" in your feel good family film for the holiday season.
Dwayne Johnson is Callum Drift, commander of ELF (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification), head of Santa Claus's security detail who is ready to retire after 3 centuries on the job but he's got a big crisis to fix first: a black ops team has breached the North Pole's defenses and kidnapped Santa on Christmas Eve.
M.O.R.A . is pissed.
What the hell is M.O.R.A? It's the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority, a clandestine, multilateral military organization that oversees and protects a secret peace treaty between mythological creatures and humanity.
(It's this movie's version of S.H.I.E.L.D. Again, think Santa meets Marvel.)
Santa being kidnapped on Christmas Eve causes all sorts of problems M.O.R.A. director Zoe Harlow (Lucy Lui who after all these years is still all sorts of kick ass awesome) ominously warns us about. She tracks the security breach to Jack O'Malley, a ne're do well hacker and tracker who is forced to join forces with Cal to locate the mysterious person who hired him in the first place.
By the way, Jack is having trouble connecting with his estranged son which tosses in some Hallmark level human interest into this thing.
Red One has something for everyone if want to hardwire a Hallmark Christmas movies into an installment of Fast and the Furious.
The tonal shifts in this movie are a bit much and I can see why the reviews of this film were not favorable when it first came out.
But turn off the analytical part of your brain and Red One is a lot of fun if for no other reason than the wild expansive world building that goes into who Santa Claus is, how he works and the larger connection of other mythologies and how they co-exist with the so called real world.
Side note: when I was a child and started to poke holes into this whole Santa Claus thing, I asked my mom how does Santa get into houses without chimneys. She said Santa shrinks down real small and comes into the house around the edges of the door.
In Red One, Santa shrinks! Hey, my mom was right!
J. K. Simmons is a wonderfully different type of Santa. Yeah, he's warm and empathetic and he believes in children, the innocence of childhood and the magic of wonder but his Santa is no stereotypical jolly old elf. Simmons' Santa is jacked! Get a load of St. Nick's guns as he works out in the weight room. This is a man who takes what he does seriously even as he retains his love for what he does.
Magic and science collide and not always without some damage in this strange movie that combines enchantment with high octane action but Red One is a fantastic fun ride.
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Another post goes live later today as the Countdown to Christmas gets under way.
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