Red One begins the Christmas period with a disappointing start that will leave audiences bored and annoyed. Photo: Amazon Studios.
We are now less than 50 days until Christmas and that means it’s time for Mariah Carey to rear her head, trees to be decorated and movies about the best holiday of the year to be released.
The first cab off the rank for 2024’s Christmas list is Red One, and it pains me to say, but if this is the precedent for movies this Christmas, I don’t think Hollywood is going to get a visit from Santa.
Red One sees Jack (Chris Evans), an international hacker/tracker, unknowingly give a mysterious group the location of the North Pole. With this information, they kidnap Santa Claus (JK Simmons) just 48 hours before Christmas night.
With the clock ticking to rescue Santa, his bodyguard, Callum (Dwayne Johnson), sets out to find Jack and use him to once again track Santa’s location.
On the surface, that sounds fun as hell! A family action movie featuring Father Christmas? Sign me up!
Despite all the excitement for what seemed like a fun time at the cinema, I was greatly disappointed.
Even with a whacky premise and a pretty solid cast, this movie is abysmal.
From the get-go, it was clear this movie was not polished at all. While Dwayne Johnson gets top billing for this film, I firmly believe the famous actor Green Screen should have been above the title because it is everywhere.
North Pole, green screen. Beach in the Caribbean, green screen. School office, green screen. Driving in a car, green screen. Green screen, green screen, green screen!
Now, that’s not to say using a green screen is bad, but it is when it is super-freaking noticeable. The worst instances are the action scenes or moments when characters are moving. It looks like a PlayStation cut scene with Dwayne Johnson superimposed over it. Not a PlayStation 5, either. A Play Station 2.
The best way I can explain it is like this: imagine your five-year-old has drawn a picture (you know it’s not great, but you keep it anyway), then take a magazine cut out of The Rock and glue it to that drawing. Once that is done, film that drawing for TWO HOURS!
This movie is also one of the most expensive of the year, costing Amazon Studios around $250 million. That is absurd. There is no justification for this amount of money being spent anywhere throughout this film.
Even the costumes look awful. If characters aren’t dressing up in rejected Power Rangers outfits, they’re kitted out with Dwayne Johnson’s latest Under Armour line.
The script is also atrocious. There’s no sense of wonder or exploration. Everyone phones it in. It felt like I was watching a Disney Channel Christmas special with A-list actors. It was also boring. At one point, I opened my phone and scrolled through the US election results because that was more intriguing.
The only reason I finished watching the film was because I knew I had an obligation to write a review this week, and unfortunately, this was the only thing I was able to see this week. I watched it so you wouldn’t have to.
Please don’t see this movie. It’s bad. If you go, you will be put on the naughty list, but a worse punishment is having seen this film.
Red One is showing in cinemas across the country, but again, please, don’t see it.
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