Review: When Santa Claus goes missing, an action film struggles to connect in ‘Red One’

Dwayne Johnson, left, and Chris Evans in the movie “Red One.”

(Karen Neal / Prime)

There’s a moment in the middle of “Red One,” the Christmas-themed action-comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, where you witness the movie just roll over and die. Time of death? A slap contest during Krampusnacht, the alternative St. Nicholas Day, in which a bunch of extras wearing rubber monster masks foraged from the set of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” stand around and watch as an unrecognizable Kristofer Hivju (the “Game of Thrones” actor playing Krampus) and Johnson take turns walloping each other across the face. Momentum grinding to a halt, the absurdities and indignities that unfolded before this point are all but forgotten, lost in a swirl of badly rendered pixels. The rest of the film is a limp to the finish line, not that it was all that spry to begin with.

But is it sinewy? Yes. “Red One,” with a story by Hiram Garcia (Johnson’s former brother-in-law and producing partner), is a movie premised upon the most trenchant of questions: What if Santa Claus was jacked? J.K. Simmons provides the biceps as the St. Nick in question, a buff Father Christmas. Every other element of Christmas is also jacked: the snowmen, the polar bears and even the elves or, rather, the E.L.F. (Enforcement, Logistics, Fortitude), his security team, headed up by Callum Drift (Johnson), clad in red and green leathers.

Cal has been keeping Santa safe for hundreds of years and on the eve of his well-earned retirement, right before Christmas, Santa is snatched from the North Pole by a mysterious high-tech team. Cal’s only chance to track down Santa is to team up with the hacker-for-hire who geolocated Santa’s workshop, Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a wisecracking cynic who has never been a believer anyway.

Directed by Jake Kasdan and scripted by Chris Morgan, “Red One” is supposed to be a sort of odd-couple buddy comedy, or at least it takes the somewhat recognizable shape of one among all the Christmas puns, and monstrous abominations they keep throwing our way (the image of a giant, muscly snowman hoisting his torso back onto his legs will haunt my nightmares forever, I’m afraid). Unfortunately, Johnson and Evans have a dearth of screen chemistry.

Johnson, who normally exudes an excess of charisma, excels when he’s playing tough guys (as in the “Fast and Furious” franchise) or against type (“Jumanji,” “Central Intelligence”). In “Red One,” he’s both and yet neither. Cal is a tough guy but also not of this world. He has a certain Amelia Bedelia quality in which he takes every sarcastic quip of Jack’s literally, his reactions played for laughs that fall totally flat. He and Evans never find their groove, and while Evans’ Boston-accented deadbeat cad routine is rote for him at this point, Johnson feels adrift, never locking in to a specific tone.

But this is splitting hairs when everything else swirling around them is so utterly dreadful. The jokes don’t land, the action sequences are shockingly awful (all due respect to the indubitably overtaxed VFX artists) and none of these celebrities seem to be having fun with one another. Simmons’ role isn’t much more than a cameo, as he spends most of the movie asleep in a fishbowl, trapped there by Kiernan Shipka’s “Christmas witch” Gryla. Lucy Liu is at least adept at playing the stern director of the organization for controlling mythological entities and creatures. They’re going for a kind of holiday-themed “Mission: Impossible” or “Jason Bourne” vibe, which is lightly amusing for all of five minutes.

The point doesn’t need to be belabored beyond this. “Red One” is a confounding project that is clearly trying to be for all audiences (it’s weirdly kiddie-oriented, but feels more aimed at adults) and is so bad it ends up being for none. The best part is when Evans, as Jack, attempts to explain the whole mess to his son and ends up describing the inexplicable and ridiculous plot in a hilariously flat and literal manner. Pull these Christmas cookies out of the oven, because “Red One” is overdone.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.