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Review by E.C.McMullen Jr. |
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RED ONE- 2024USA Release: Nov. 15, 2024 Chris Morgan Productions, Seven Bucks Productions, The Detective Agency, Big Indie Pictures, British Columbia Film, Québec Production Services Tax Credit, Amazon MGM Studios Rated: USA: PG-13 |
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It's Christmas Eve in someone's big house, lots of family all around, and a child named Jack (Wyatt Hunt: So far in his young life, he only makes Christmas movies and RED ONE is his 3rd) is gathering his young cousins into a room.
He's going to show them something that will blow their minds.
He opens a closet door and the inside is filled with Christmas presents.
It's all a lie, he tells them. Here are your presents from Santa because there IS no Santa.
Jack says this last part just as his Father enters the room.
The children are all shooed away except for Jack. His Father explains that these are all Christmas presents, but none of them are from Santa. Santa is real and he hasn't arrived yet.
Jack doesn't buy it.
Years later Jack O'Malley is a 40 something grown adult and played by Chris Evans (FANTASTIC FOUR, TMNT [2007], SUNSHINE, FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER, PUSH, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER [all], THE AVENGERS [all], PUNCTURE, SNOW PIERCER, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, AVENGERS ENDGAME, KNIVES OUT, DEFENDING JACOB, THE GRAY MAN, DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE). Adult Jack goes through his day casually stealing from people as he passes by. He does all of this so smooth, demonstrating decades of experience, that people notice their things missing, but look around themselves as if they misplaced it. At first they don't know they've been robbed. And by the time they're ready to look, Jack is hidden by the passerby. Nobody ever sees Jack's larceny.
On this day, Jack will set a fire in public and nobody will catch him at it. The fire and the attention it brings is only a ruse for him to steal a badge from his mark, which let's him into a secure building, and eventually into a high security room where he commandeers the company computers to do a little searching for a client.
Jack gets his big payday and goes home to celebrate. He's soon shouting at the TV screen however as he loses a huge bet on his team.
Jack's high-end upscale thievery doesn't enrich him because his gambling addiction impoverishes him.
His ex calls him, reminding him yet again that he made a promise to their child, Dylan (Wesley Kimmel: WANDAVISION [TV]). He made a promise and he has to keep it. She can't cover for him today.
Meanwhile,
Up at the North Pole, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson: THE MUMMY RETURNS, THE SCORPION KING, DOOM, RAMPAGE), head of Santa's security, Santa's personal bodyguard, Commander of ELF (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification - because acronyms are hard), and the favored among Santa's all gal reindeer who, oddly enough, have a massive rack of male antlers.
ELF is a division of MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), a secret, International organization that protects mythological varmints from humanity and vice versa. Callum has been with Santa "Nick" Claus (J.K. Simmons: THE GIFT, SPIDER-MAN [2002 - all the Sam Raimi ones], TERMINATOR GENISYS, COUNTERPART [TV], THE TOMORROW WAR, GLORIOUS, INVINCIBLE [TV]) for over 500 years and he wants to retire. He's got the yips.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and Calumn prepares himself for his last ride with Santa.
Then Santa gets kidnapped!
Soon Director Zoe (Lucy Lui: KILL BILL Vol. 1 and 2, RISE: BLOODHUNTER) steps in to coordinate the retrieval of Santa Claus.
In no time they are on the trail of You Know Who!
No, not Santa Claus. They've no clue about Claus. But they have found the trail off a high end security company that pin pointed Santa Claus's location and that leads right back to "the best tracker in the world", that little ol' black-hat hacker and thief...
Jack.
They soon realize that Jack knows nothing of his client. That's not how this skullduggery works.
He's offered a job by powerful anon people. He takes the job and does it and they electronically, anonymously, send money to his bank account. Where he promptly loses most of it on a stupid bet.
So they've found Jack, but he's a dead end, right? At this point there's no further need for Jack, right?
No, because someone like Jack is way too paranoid and skeptical to trust complete strangers offering to pay him for committing crimes, when it comes to his time and money - as well as his liberty. Jack always hacks his clients too.
Who his trail leads to may not be the Endboss, but that person will know the endboss and Jack's hacker wizardry will make their lives hell if they try to screw him.
So MORA has something to work with and now begins the highspeed, nearly merry adventures of a reluctant Jack and a driven Callum on the case of the Kidnapped Claus.
It's a Mystery! A Thriller! And since it has Dwayne Johnson, a "Buddy Movie".
Truthfully, RED ONE isn't as bad as the movie trailer(s) made it out to be, but its just like every Dwayne Johnson family flick his company produces (The Jumanjis, for example. Jungle Cruise for another. There's probably more.) and he's also playing the same character, only with a different name.
It's not a "Wrestling thing". Dave Bautista's "Drax" in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is nothing like his "Sapper Morton" in BLADE RUNNER 2049 and both of those characters are nothing like his "Rabban Harkonnen" in DUNE, despite them all being genre movies and them all having his hulking gym rat presence.
While I was watching RED ONE with my kids (in addition to my nieces and nephews - we're a large family), we were all enjoying it.
Later that evening, I soon realized that they were already forgetting it. There's nothing in RED ONE that grabbed any of us.
Krampus is there, but this Krampus is pretty mild compared to the Plethora of Krampuseses we've seen in recent years.
Worse, what appears to be practical effect masks are so huge and bulky that Krampus and his other costumed guests all have exaggerated, sunk well back into their skulls, deep set eyes. Yes, we saw that with the original PREDATOR, but that was over 3 decades ago and that creature was an alien.
Practical SFX people like Rick Baker did away with that deep set eyes look back in the late 1970s.
Hellboy only has a prominent brow ridge because actor Ron Perlman has a prominent brow ridge.
This constantly calls attention to itself because it diferentiates all of the creatures from practical to cgi: like Agent Garcia, the talking anthropomorphic polar bear, or the Snowmen, whose eyes aren't starring out of ridiculously deep pits.
Sheesh!
Produced and Directed by Jake Kasdan, RED ONE feels packaged, safe, and risk free. Despite the original story, all of the characters actions also feel bland and formulaic.
Writers Chris Morgan (WANTED) and Hiram Garcia (for whatever reason) were careful not to imagine a swing for the fences.
I got to agree with some of the kids who said RED ONE is kind of like a mild version of GHOSTBUSTERS but with less humor. What can I say? I made sure they grew up on GHOSTBUSTERS, John Carpenter's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, TREMORS, THE FIFTH ELEMENT, and GALAXY QUEST.
For being a pale imitation of so much that has come before, yet not so bad that I felt they were wasting my time in the theater seat, I give this disposable bit of fun 3 Shriek Girls.
Its good for a watch. I dont think many kids will want toys from it.
This review copyright 2024 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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| CHRISTMAS CATASTROPHE | |||
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| BLACK CHRISTMAS MOVIE REVIEW |
KRAMPUS MOVIE REVIEW |
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS MOVIE REVIEW |
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