‘Red One’ Review: Senseless But Enjoyable Red Fun

The first Christmas movie of the year has hit theatres ahead of the holiday season, and as expected Red One is a bit of a mixed bag. Read our Red One review below.

It hasn’t been a great year for big-budget blockbusters. While some films have succeeded at the box office, with a couple of them even being good, the vast majority fall into an opposing category. Red One seems like it will fall into the latter, between what’s kind of an early release due to a crowded December, and just a middling movie in terms of quality. It’s not looking great for the film. 

Red One follows E.L.F operative Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) and criminal Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) who are forced to team up and track down Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) after he was kidnapped by the villainous Gryla (Kiernan Shipka). The result is a globetrotting journey riddled with fun little festive nods. 

Director Jake Kasdan redeems himself somewhat from the pretty poorly received second movie in the Jumanji revival. Here he gets to create his own lore from scratch, using real-life folklore and urban legends as the basis for intrigue. What comes of this is a pretty fun and engrossing worldbuilding. From the ability to turn toys into real life, to Krampus’ compound and the history of the world. 

The dynamic between Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans is very surface level sadly, but that is all it aims to be and for that reason, the actors lean into it enough for it to be a good time. Dwayne plays the hardened and seasoned veteran of the field, something that can be easily compared to his role as Hobbs in Fast & Furious (which makes sense considering F&F: Hobbs & Shaw writer Chris Morgan penned the film). On the contrary, Chris Evans could easily fit into the Shaw role from the same franchise, but with a more childlike attitude. His character, O’Malley, comes across as a manchild with no responsibilities. The character is labelled as an infamous criminal who can do anything, but the movie fails to show any of that in his characteristics or even actions. 

The pacing here is by far the worst aspect of the feature. The movie takes forever to get going, with the two leads barely getting together until around 40 minutes in. Then the movie is riddled with quiet and simple breaks, where all character development that’s supposed to be in these scenes is all extremely surface-level and predictable. Between this, and the odd lack of Santa, the movie feels weak and just missing some pizzazz. 

That being said, I did enjoy some of the twists in the film, and a specific scene with Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) in the middle of the film was very enjoyable, making for an eccentric break before the inevitable huge CGI third act. Visually, the movie is pretty well polished in terms of effects and practical aspects, only being let down by some uninspired cinematography. 

Red One can be easily enjoyed by anyone with an open mind, but if you are sensitive to poor writing, pacing and The Rock, then this one might not be for you. 

Red One is directed by Jake Kasdan and stars Chris Evans as Jack O’Malley, Dwayne Johnson as Callum Drift, JK Simmons as Santa Claus, Lucy Liu as Zoe Harlow, Kristofer Hivju as Krampus, and Kiernan Shipka as Gryla. The film is now in theatres in Australia and will be released in US theatres on November 15th, 2024 courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 

Thank you for reading our Red One review, for more reviews stay tuned here at Feature First.