(courtesy IMP Awards)
While it’s highly unlikely that you have, there is a slim possibility, especially if you are of a vibrantly fecund imaginative bent, that you have wondered what might happened if someone was to make a Christmas movie that felt, in many ways, like a Marvel bang-boom-bam blockbuster.
Well, wonder no more, dreamily festive types who want their Christmas flicks with a heavy dose of superhero bravado, Red One is here to scratch that bombastic Christmas itch you’d didn’t even know you had.
The thing is, while it might seem like the sort of genre mix sprung straight from the darkly punishing mind of Krampus (more on him later), Red One largely pull off its standard Christmas tropes and clichés-defying act.
Oh, they are are all right, for what kind of festive flick would it be if they weren’t, but they are woven into a ballsy, dark-and-dangerous approach that doesn’t always pull off its lofty postmodern narrative ambitions, but which succeeds far more often than you think it might.
Written by Chris Morgan and directed by Jake Kasdan, Red One kicks off as it means to go on, with a back in time set piece that establishes, as all good festive flicks must, that one of its principal characters, cynical hacker and bounty hunter Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) has long been in need of some restorative Christmas spirit.
We quickly switch it up to the present (no pun intended but gleefully embraced anyway) where O’Malley is willing to do just about anything to service his gambling debt, including getting into metaphorical bed with some nefarious forces who mean Santa harm.
Is Christmas is great and present danger?
It is, and it’s not just the Christmas tree decorations in the rotunda at the tech company that suffer; Jack’s actions, the exact nature of which must be left to the viewing, directly lead to jolly old Santa, who is clearly gym-toned, muscular and vibrantly sparkly, and played with great gusto by J. K. Simmons, being taken hostage and used for quite terrible purposes by … SPOILERS!!!
Suffice to say, Santa’s kidnapping, just a day out from Christmas Eve, causes all manner of mayhem, and it’s up to Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), the North Pole’s Head of Security (for over 500 years, no less!) who, rather appropriately, dresses in figure-hugging red and green leather, to get him back in time to race around the world, doing what he does best.
To do that though he needs Jack, well so says Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu), the head of a secret worldwide trans-governmental which looks after mythological figures – they are real and they are among us – who deputises a very reluctant Jack, who naturally enough is a deadbeat dad of good intentions estranged from his teenage son Dylan (Wesley Kimmel), and so begins a story of a road tripping odd couple who together have to get Santa aka Red One back in his ornate but racy supersized sleigh in time for the big night.
As far as the whole saving Christmas plot goes, Red One is not that dissimilar from a host of other Christmas films out with heavily-telegraphed themes of redemption and healing – do Jack and Dylan bond? Does Dwayne get over at his disillusionment at the sorry state of humanity? Yes and yes but you knew that already, right? – but it’s what it does with these well-worn but heartwarming ingredients that really makes Red One a lot of fun.
It throws them into the what-if blender with some very Marvellian moments of heroism and villainous darkness – the Big Bad in the story has giant, killing machine snowmen and a nasty way of bring her idea of joy to the world (yeah, not that joyful, as it turns out) – and we end up with a film that is sweet and redemptive but with a very gritty piece of action set-piece wrappng.
In fact, at times, you are wont to wonder if you have indeed roamed into the wrong cinema and you’re watching an MCU film that just happens to take place in December with all the mythological trappings.
The Big Bad is bad, many of the battles are scarily intense, and Santa is actually in real mortal danger, as it humanity.
There is whimsy and there is fun but it often plays second fiddle to a really full-on battle between the forces of tinsel and baubles and toys and one which aims to punish those on the Naughty List for all time.
In-between all these often dark and no-nonsense machinations, Red One does go big on the festive spectacle.
The North Pole, which sits under a heavy duty icicle-shaped shield which renders it invisible to the outside world, is as fantastically red, green and gold wonderful with snowy lanes and cute houses and a general sense of festive bonhomie at every turn (and elves that looks like Harry Potter‘s Dobby; Red One is clearly also an origin story for this dearly-loved character) and the idea that the supply rooms of toy stores are the transit points for a worldwide Christmassy transit system is playfully wondrous.
There are Christmas songs, concerts, decorations, warmth and joy, and also some world weary, materialistic darkness, and a whole lot more, with Red One making it very clear that it is a festive flick, and while you could argue it is a tad too heavyhanded, if you are a Christmasaholic you won’t mind a bit, especially when it comes to how cleverly they weave Krampus into the big and sprawling but somehow tightly told plot.
It doesn’t always pull off its highwire act merging Marvel and merriment but Red One succeeds more often than it doesn’t, offering up a refreshingly inventive take on Christmas mythology, characters who are fully more fully-rounded that you’d expect in a seasonal film and some warm-and fuzzy feelings which let’s face it, whether Christmas is threatened or not, is exactly what you want from any film at this time of the year and which makes them wild blockbuster festive ride one that’s a huge amount of fun to go on.