Grade: D
I’d been misspeaking the title of Red One. I was putting the emphasis on the first word (as in something that’s red). It’s Red ONE, as opposed to Red Two and beyond. I’d call it Red Lost. It’s a boring, uninteresting, hollow shell of a movie. I only saw it because I’ve seen J.K. Simmons in three others this year (You Can’t Run Forever, Saturday Night, Juror #2), and I plan to single him out in my year-end article as one of 2024’s best multitaskers – and this would have been an elephant-in-the-room omission if I’d missed it. He’s the best performance here (other than three of my Atlanta actor friends that I spotted; it was great to see them), but he’s barely in this.
He plays jolly old St. Nick himself. We first see him at a Philadelphia mall on Christmas Eve, finishing up the last stop of his tour. Once he’s done, he and his entourage make the inter dimensional flight back home to the North Pole. Despite having seemingly stringent security, led by Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), he gets kidnapped. Johnson’s head of security calls upon an alcoholic, ne’er do well bounty hunter (Chris Evans) to help save Christmas.
The production values and fight choreography are on par with 1990s TV shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Evans and Johnson play their usual types without a hint of originality. Everything looks like a cheap set on a soundstage, with actors having no regard for the temperature in the “outdoor” scenes in the falling snow. At PG-13, it seems more geared for the PG crowd. It’s bad. I was alone in the Dolby theater at my showing.
Many movies have been made that have their own creative explanation/demonstration of how Santa Claus can physically do what he does every December 24th. I loved the sequence in Red One that shows it in action. It’s the only life in the film. I think part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was because I knew things were about to wrap up, no pun intended.
Grade: D
Film Reviews by Mark 
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