Red One

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Chris Evans and J.K. Simmons star in the new Christmas themed film, Red One, opening this weekend to a large budget.

Santa (JK Simmons) is preparing for his yearly trek across the globe when he gets kidnapped. Cal (Dwayne Johnson), head of St. Nick’s security, has to reluctantly team-up with 4th level naughty-lister Jack (Chris Evans), the man who unwittily provided specifics for the kidnapping to be successful, to save Christmas.

Johnson, Evans and Simmons are all very likable and entertaining in this movie. Johnson is playing the same version of The Rock that he always plays, but he is enjoyable at it. Evans’ character is another version that we have seen before.

The story had some fun moments, but truthfully there was not much that we have not seen before. I did like the Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) section of the film, but we saw a good chunk of this in trailers. In fact, one of my favorite lines of the trailer was not in the film. Still, I did like the section.

Some of the special effects looked great, but a lot of the CGI was not great. Again, most of the Krampus parts of the movie were good, mainly because they seemed to be mostly practical effects.

I had heard a lot of negative reviews about this movie, but I did not hate it. It was okay. It may not be a great movie, but it is about what you would expect when you watch it. It has a place as a Christmas movie watch that can be fun for the family. It is never going to be considered a classic, but it has likable actors and some fun action.

3.1 stars

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