Red One review: a spectacular holiday misfire

On paper, it makes perfect sense at this point in his career for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to headline a Christmas-themed action movie. The wrestler-turned-actor-turned-branding juggernaut has, both for better and for worse, spent the past 15 years of his career establishing himself as a family-friendly action star. He has never had a perfect track record, but for a few years there in the mid-to-late 2010s, The Rock was starring in enough inoffensively average action movies (see: San Andreas, Central Intelligence, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) to earn his place as America’s favorite mid movie star.

Things haven’t been great for The Rock as of late, though. Jungle Cruise, Red Notice, and Black Adam have all been disastrous misfires that have revealed not only a certain laziness in the actual craft of The Rock’s movies, but also an unwavering overreliance on appallingly bad CGI. Both those revelations have thrown the action-star status he spent nearly a decade trying to cultivate into question. Red One, which marks a reunion between Johnson, Jumanji director Jake Kasdan, and longtime Fast & Furious screenwriter Chris Morgan, isn’t the course correction that its star desperately needs right now, either. On the contrary, it’s one of the most frustrating misses of his career to date.

At the center of Red One‘s story is Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a world-class hacker and bounty hunter who isn’t so much stuck in a rut of bad behavior as he is trapped on an island of selfishness that he built. He may carry himself like an arrogant, aloof Bad Guy, but his strained relationship with his adolescent son, Dylan (Wesley Kimmel), reveals the nagging emptiness at the core of his existence. Red One, to its credit, has a lot of fun introducing Evans’ low-level criminal first as a smarmy child who makes it his business (literally) to dissuade other kids from believing in Santa Claus and then later as an adult who makes stealing a successful scientist’s business credentials seem as easy as swiping another person’s coffee order.

The film is, in fact, at its best in its first act, which coasts on the same mischievous, playful vibes as so many Christmas classics that have come before it. This is even true for Red One‘s introduction of The Rock’s Callum Drift, the no-nonsense head of security for the big guy himself, Santa Claus (an overqualified J.K. Simmons). When we meet him at the start of Red One, Callum is still as dedicated to protecting his boss as he’s ever been. However, as he reveals in a genuinely affecting moment of reflection, he’s lost the ability to see the good in everyone he meets. His disillusionment with the world, which Morgan’s mostly messy screenplay handles with a surprisingly deft mix of tongue-in-cheek humor and sincerity, is the reason why — much to Santa’s disappointment — Callum has decided to resign after the forthcoming Christmas holiday.

Callum’s plans are upended when a sorceress named Grýla (Kiernan Shipka) uses Jack’s expert tracking skills to locate Santa and kidnap him from the North Pole just two days before Christmas. In response, Callum teams up with Zoe Harlow (an underused Lucy Liu), the head of a military organization dedicated to protecting the world’s good-hearted mythological figures and policing its most dangerous ones, to find Simmons’ Saint Nicholas and save him from Grýla. Zoe and Callum’s investigation quickly leads them to Jack, who is forced to help Callum track down Santa’s nefarious kidnapper. Along the way, the two men form an unlikely friendship that ultimately holds the answers to both of their well-hidden personal issues.

Opposite each other, Evans and Johnson have shockingly strong chemistry together. Johnson actually gives one of his better performances in years as Red One‘s level-headed North Pole warrior by finding just the right notes of absurdist humor and earnest strength in the character. Callum and Jack’s story is, unfortunately, the sole strength of a film that never really comes together. Morgan’s screenplay is too rambling and overlong, and while Red One‘s interest in exploring some of the world’s lesser-known Christmas myths gives it a unique identity in the Holiday Movie Canon, it’s also what leads it down its least rewarding paths. These include a trip to visit Santa’s exiled minotaur-like brother, Krampus (Game of Thrones star Kristofer Hivju, buried under layers of makeup prosthetics), which culminates with Callum and him testing their strength in a slap fight that feels wholly pointless in a movie that is already too unfocused and tonally uneven.

Red One‘s visit to Krampus’ realm features some of its most impressive practical efforts — Hivju and company are all believably transformed into demonic-looking monsters — but the sequence goes on far too long considering how unfunny it is. The scene is a creative swing that doesn’t connect, and the same goes for Red One‘s villain. After giving one of the year’s strangest and best one-scene performances in Longlegs, Kiernan Shipka sticks out like a sore thumb in Red One. Her casting as Grýla, an immortal witch hell-bent on imprisoning everyone on the Naughty List, makes little sense. Despite Red One‘s half-hearted attempts to explain her youthful appearance away, Shipka is simply miscast in the role, and this results in her giving a performance that is too stiff and too over-the-top to make you respond with anything other than one long, sustained cringe.

As has been the case with most of Johnson’s past few movies, the action scenes in Red One range from forgettable to visually unappealing. Its few North Pole-set chases and fight sequences, in particular, rank high among the worst action set pieces of the year. These scenes attempt to blend together digital environments, real actors, and computer-generated stand-ins in a manner that is not only completely unconvincing, but that also makes them look like sequences ripped out of a bad video game. Red One, consequently, only barely qualifies as an action movie.

It is, in other words, another entry in The Rock’s filmography that feels more like a messy assortment of cobbled-together pieces than one cohesive blockbuster. The best thing you can say about Red One is that it has heart, which makes it at least better than 2021’s Red Notice. But heart alone does not a good film make. Callum Drift may have what it takes to save Christmas, but Red One can’t even save itself.

Red One is now playing in theaters.