Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans in a holiday fantasy action movie that gives Christmas unnecessary backstory

Here’s a bad joke of Hollywood Christmas movies. They tend to start and end with a burst of old-school Christmas fun. But this is just a tease. Meanwhile, most of them try to get as far away from the Christmas spirit as possible. Instead, they embrace a new American ethos: vulgar, violent, full of false fun, glorifying its own rudeness. To trace the origins of the anti-Christmas Christmas movie (Jingle All the Way, Rough Night), you’ll probably have to go back to a couple of films that are considered classics (though not by me): A Christmas Carol and Home Alone, both glasses of eggnog flavored with misanthropy.

That said, I’m not sure a Hollywood film has ever kicked off the season with less true Christmas spirit than Red. Of course, J.K. Simmons plays Santa Claus (who gets kidnapped) and Simmons wins in his wrinkly old wise innocence. Dwayne Johnson as Santa’s bodyguard (who wants to retire because he’s having a crisis of faith) is his huge, friendly personality. The weird thing about this movie is that while it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, it’s not really a comedy. Red, directed with charming energy by Jake Kasdan, is also an action movie; a kidnapping thriller in which toy store closet doors are mystical portals; and an exercise in Christmas world-building, as if This something that has been missing since Christmas.

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In the beginning, Simmons’ Santa sits on his throne and greets a line of children at the mall, a place he considers the most soulful place on earth (which shows how far we’ve come from Ring All the Way – even Santa is now digging capitalism in everything this!). The hottest toy of the season that kids keep asking him for is a video game called Vampire Assassin 4. We have to laugh at how un-Christmasy that sounds. What is. But Red could almost be the movie version of Vampire Killer 4. It’s so intense and self-aware, crammed with cheesy digital effects, that the whole thing is a piece of brutal kitsch.

The first not-so-funny “joke” in the film is that the entire Santa Claus enterprise is being run as a US military operation. Santa’s code name is Red. Johnson’s Cal works for ELF, which stands for Strengthening Law Enforcement Logistics and means Cal scurries around like a Secret Service agent, shouting orders into his wrist radio. CF drones, Sno-Cats, cargo plane: the film is light on tinsel, but heavy on equipment. And the dialogue is techy enough to sound like something out of a 1986 Dan Aykroyd comedy.

It’s also, of course, a movie for friends. No, not Santa and his bodyguard. (Once Santa is kidnapped, which happens early on, he’s mostly out of the picture.) The pals who begin to hate each other are Cal, tasked with tracking down Santa’s whereabouts, and Jack (Chris Evans), a degenerate sports gambler and an abandoned divorced father who also happens to be some sort of super hacker. He is hired by disreputable forces from around the world to use encrypted messages to reveal the hidden locations of people and things, which he does with ease.

It was Jack’s work that revealed Santa’s exact location at the North Pole (under the dome, sort of like a Christmas store version of the Pentagon). And that’s what allowed Santa to kidnap Gryla, the ancient witch played by the always welcome Kiernan Shipka, who since Mad Men I thought (and still think) would be a major star – and this movie, in its rawest way, shows , Why. Gryla is a generic, nuanced, ominous enemy that looks like something out of a National Treasure sequel. However, the way Shipka plays her, her anger tingles. Her evil dream? Punish everyone on Santa’s naughty list.

We meet Santa’s reindeer, which are interchangeable oversized digital creatures called “girls.” Why are reindeer so tall? And why do they all have to be women? It’s the kind of “anything goes” conceit that dots “Red.” Cal and Jack go to Aruba just for fun. At the beach, Cal surprisingly changes size during a fight, and the two of them have to fend off an attack from ferocious snowmen. But this is just one pit stop. They find themselves in Germany, in a medieval Star Wars cantina, trying to escape Santa’s estranged brother, the giant goat troll Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), at which point you’re either on board or (in my case) starting to check your watch.

The villains are werewolves, but the great thing about “Red” is that the whole movie is a werewolf: hard-hitting action jokes, low-kitsch Christmas tale, buddy movie, family reconciliation movie – every quadrant and demo. must be submitted. In the movies, Christmas is no longer a holiday, it’s a concept that needs to be rethought. Do you hear the sleigh bells ringing? Come on, this is perfect weather for flying over the North Pole, through a supply portal, on a cargo plane with you.

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