If this movie’s production was a money laundering scheme, does that mean someone can be prosecuted for the existence of Red One?
I haven’t seen a movie with such ineffective dialogue in a long time. It’s an unending line of uncomplicated events with characters existing in one set piece after another. I sincerely wondered how much of this was written by AI.
It is madness to pay enough to get a charismatic talent like JK Simmons and then give him this dialogue.
There are shallow character arcs for Chris Evans (who grows during his plot ride-along, though it’s totally unearned) and for The Rock, who frowns a lot. I imagined gay stuff happening between them, and that carried me through about an hour of the absurdly unjustified two hour runtime. Bear in mind that I can imagine gay things happening between anyone. There was no vibes, warmth, or genuine connection going on. They showed up to collect paychecks. I’m just really good at making anything gay to entertain myself. I enjoyed Argylle.
Highlights in this cast of paycheck-collectors include Kiernan Shipka, whose casting as a witch was spit out by an AI casting director, and Lucy Liu, who is fearless in the face of trash ever since Ecks vs Sever. Both of them look extremely hot. Good for you, ladies.
On the bright side, forked-tongue daddy Krampus seems designed specifically to get middle aged monster-loving moms horny, and I can get behind that type of pandering.
It feels pointless to complain about the Christofascism of a Christmas fantasy movie. I saw “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” There’s such a precedent for this. You already can imagine Red One’s global hegemony supporting corpo-Christian mythology without seeing it. This is a world where myths range from “American capitalism” all the way to “German-themed scary woman” and “Puritan-era spooky spook.” We can assume from the figures presented (billions of Christmas-celebrating households!) mean this Christian mythology encompasses the planet.
Fine.
If you like mushy dark Marvel-esque visuals with an urban fantasy twist, fine!
It’s possible the score was actually the worst part of this movie. It was intrusive and lacked any character whatsoever, like everything else about Red One. The score somehow just…really drove home for me the soullessness of what I was watching.
I kinda wish I was more offended by Red One because it would have meant I had more feelings about it. I wish I felt like anyone had been passionate about it. If we’re going to compare CG-heavy action movies with overblown budgets, hot women, and thin stories from 2024, I still prefer Argylle. Isn’t that bananas?
The one star of this review goes entirely to Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Liu, and Krampus’s forked tongue.
(image credit: Amazon)
