Christmas, cheerlessly delivered by Amazon

For a single sequence in the middle RedWith a new Christmas prank aimed simultaneously at all viewers and none at all, the film comes to life as if it were waking up from an anesthetized haze. Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), a long-time security guard for none other than Santa Claus (JK Simmons), is on the trail of his kidnapped boss and has recruited the cynical, bratty “villain” Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) to help him to help. Her shrugging, “try asking this guy, I guess” mission has led her to the hidden land of Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), a fearsome creature with ties to Santa Claus. Suddenly the film is awash in elaborate makeup work with practical effects and enough Christmas-themed animals to fill perhaps not the famous cantina on Tatooine, but perhaps a more modest dive bar in a similar neighborhood. Jack, trying to get out of harm’s way, engages Callum in a slap game. The slapstick is funny and takes advantage of Johnson’s ability to take a punch. The effects look neat, as if they were created out of pure love for the form. There’s a certain palpable atmosphere – even real movie magic, without causing the audience to widen their eyes in amazement.

Before and after this sequence Red is a grind. Maybe it was a way for director Jake Kasdan to semi-apologize: “Look, y’all.” Zero effect Fans, this type of film is clearly dead and buried, but something as reasonably entertaining as this one is Jumanji Films are not off the table. What’s even scarier is that the filmmakers may have convinced themselves that the rest of the film is more or less on the same level of fun, perhaps because it’s not actively hateful.

Red is, however, a decidedly joyless execution of a premise designed to brim with fantasy in order to ultimately overwhelm the degenerate tracker Jack, who of course has a broken relationship with his young son Dylan (Wesley Kimmel) that needs to be mended. But the film’s invention largely serves to rebrand the North Pole as a cool, spy-y one (or at least). Spy children-similar) operation that uses both enchantments and thousands of employees to deliver gifts each year; It’s a bit like asking children and adults alike to rediscover the true meaning of Christmas by thinking about how great it would be if it were Red The parent company Amazon had access to ancient magical powers.

The aggressively secular and gift-based systems of Red are almost enough to inspire a misty-eyed holiday wish for more pious, church-based seasonal entertainment. To its credit, the film is mostly about exploring some of the strange points of various Santa Claus folklore – particularly the concept of keeping track of who was good or bad, whatever that’s supposed to mean to reconcile the open-heartedness that is associated with Christmas in a broader sense. But it’s hard to fully appreciate this when the mythological tinkerings are more clearly linked to how even the film’s whims seem focused and endlessly recalculated.

One of the film’s magical technological gimmicks is a glove that allows Callum to change the size of objects (turning toy cars into real cars, etc.), and in fight scenes he uses it on himself to disorient his opponents. The sight of a small rock flying around makes it seem as if the gag at some point involved a physically imposing wrestler from the future actually playing an elf. Maybe they recognized that Eleven I got there 20 years ago (minus the man-of-action perspective) – or maybe “using computers to create a smaller rock” was really the only inspiration behind those moments. There certainly isn’t much about his character as written; Portraying Johnson as a true believer only really works if there’s a touch of mania behind his confidence. Callum is just another drab brand for the actor to synergize with.

As for Johnson’s regular-sized co-star, will Chris Evans finish a…? Christmas song Scenario, with tragedies and nightmares from streaming companies like The gray man, Ghostlyand now Red stand in for the ghosts? Astonishing, Red It’s perhaps the best part of his recent Covert Ops trilogy simply because it doesn’t try too hard to generate endless sarcastic quips.

Instead, the film’s supposed tween-friendly cool comes from its Marvel-style production and costume design, which is to say it’s full of colors that are darkened and muted for no apparent reason other than to make a nonsensical “down-to-earth” version of it a futuristic cityscape at the North Pole. The combination of this expensive cover-up and a cycle of current events that serially shines a spotlight on unpunished behavior helps make the case for the film’s fantastic Winter Witch villain, Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), to institute an even more punitive system of Christmas sentencing wants – and looks fabulous in her tough advocacy. Unfortunately, everyone who made it Red is easy to drain.

Director: Jake Kasdan
Authors: Chris Morgan
With: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, JK Simmons, Wesley Kimmel
Release date: November 15, 2024