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Red One is a Stocking Full of Coal

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 Red One stars Chris Evans, Dwayne Johnson, and J.K. Simmons.
Red One stars Chris Evans, Dwayne Johnson, and J.K. Simmons.
Amazon MGM Studios.

Replete with phoned-in performances from nearly every member of the cast, characters more wooden than Santa’s sleigh, special effects that rival the Star Wars prequels in their quality, and a script that resembles a meandering series of Mad Libs, Red One is a veritable cornucopia of bad filmmaking and the perfect present for anyone who’s tired of films with nuance, rounded characters, or interesting plots. 

Red One begins by introducing the main character, Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a world-renowned mercenary/hacker/thief/mixed martial artist who goes by the name “The Wolf.” Jack is a bad guy, which is cleverly shown when he steals government secrets, chastises his estranged son for getting caught while slashing someone’s tires, and steals candy from a literal baby, all within the first few minutes of the movie. The film also introduces Santa Claus (J.K Simmons), who, despite his prominence in the movie’s marketing and his callsign being the title of the movie itself, isn’t really in the film for very long, being suddenly kidnapped by a shadowy group of nefarious villains almost immediately. This naturally prompts Santa’s personal paramilitary group, the E.L.F. to launch a manhunt to find Santa and his captors. The head of the E.L.F. Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), has no choice but to join forces with the one man with the skills to track down Santa, Jack O’Malley. From there, Callum and Jack jump from one action set piece to the next, exchanging witty banter and dry quips throughout. 

The biggest problem with Red One is simply that it’s boring. It has absolutely nothing going on under the hood; it is a vapid and transparently formulaic movie riding the coattails of better films, blindly copying elements without understanding why those elements were there in the first place. In the end, Red One spits out a perfectly generic message about why it’s important to be nice, putting a neat bow on this tinsel-covered turd of a movie.

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