Two weeks in a row have featured Christmas movies and we still have yet to get to Thanksgiving.  That holiday specifically does not matter to us Catholics, although it is a useful precursor to the beginning of a season that does have a great deal of value vis-á-vis the birth of Jesus, that being Advent.  Any time, of course, is a good time to prepare a place in your heart for our Lord and Savior, but the four Sundays leading up to the Holy Day are meant to emphasize the importance of doing so.  Hollywood, of course, ignores all this, though in the broader culture I have noticed in recent years an uptick in the mention of Advent calendars.  I wonder if those same people know what the word “Advent” means.  These thoughts are, unsurprisingly, far from the intentions of anything that goes on in Red One.  The Catholic Saint on whom Santa Claus (J. K. Simmons) is (extremely) loosely based, St. Nicholas of Myra, is mentioned in passing as the two people being one and the same.  There is no other religious connection spoken of throughout the rest of the movie, so I am clueless as to why we are told this fact.  As you may have already guess by this point, there will not be much good to say about this flick, so let us get this over with and move on with our lives.

A young Jack O’Malley (Wyatt Hunt), who clearly has no concept of Red One, is telling his cousins (I guess?) that Santa Claus does not exist.  The stern talking to by Uncle Rick (Marc Evan Jackson) does nothing to change Jack’s mind about the magical gift giver.  As a grown-up (Chris Evans), Jack uses that savviness to become a computer hacker and con artist.  On his way to plant a tracking device on the servers for a geological survey company, we see him literally taking candy from a baby.  It is this kind of behavior, as is later revealed, that lands him on Santa’s naughty list at level four, whatever that means.  The big man himself is currently at a mall in Philadelphia listening to the requests of children who come to sit on his lap.  Watching over him like a member of the Secret Service, hence the title, is Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson).  He is the head of Enforcement Logistics and Fortification (ELF), and get ready for a lot of these kinds of, um . . . jokes?  He loves children, but is less thrilled by adults, seeing everything wrong with older people and letting it diminish his desire to keep doing his job.  He is no less dedicated to helping Santa, but Callum has decided that this will be his last Christmas as the head, er, ELF.  As he walks through the North Pole reminiscing about how long he has been in this role, he begins to notice strange things happening in the tower where Santa lives.  Thinking something is going on with Nick, Callum radios other security personnel and all of them report not being able to locate their boss.  Callum gets to Nick’s quarters and sees something is amiss, spotting a motorized sled speeding away.  He manages to get to it before it can escape, but it is empty.  It is this moment that a drone flies off, and he realizes that Santa has been kidnapped.  This draws the attention of the director of Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority (MORA) Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu), who tasks Callum with recovering Jolly Ol’ St. Nick.  To do so, she insists that Callum partners with Jack to find Santa.  Aside from his complicity in the kidnapping, albeit unwittingly, Jack being an adult and on the naughty list makes Callum resistant.  Jack is taken from his apartment and brought to Zoe, who says she will double whatever he has been paid for the information he passed on to help locate Nick.  With a little extra persuasion from Agent Garcia (voiced by Reinaldo Faberlle), the anthropomorphic Polar Bear member of ELF, Jack is persuaded to assist.  Callum and Jack use the teleportation portals that are apparently in every toy store in order to travel instantly to Aruba, the country from which the intermediary that hired Jack contacted the hacker.  This person is Ted (Nick Kroll), who will not say out loud the one responsible for taking Nick.  That is because it is a snow witch named Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), who can hear anywhere in the world when people are talking about her.  Jack is unaware of this, and says her name aloud when Ted writes it in the sand.  To take care of a perceived threat, Gryla sends snow men, which is just an excuse for an action set piece.  Once they are dealt with Callum and Zoe figure the best place to look next is Krampus’ (Kristofer Hivju) lair in Germany since the mythical beast had once been romantically involved with Gryla.  Jack inadvertently gets him and Callum captured, which leads to yet another action set piece.  The main revelation from this is that the half-goat, half-man, full brother (somehow) of Santa is not in league with Gryla.  Instead, Callum, Jack, and Zoe deduce that Gryla must be hiding in the North Pole.  This is confirmed when Jack finds a cursed snow globe with his name on it.  So, too, does Dylan (Wesley Kimmel), Jack’s son, who finds a similar toy and is magicked to Gryla’s dungeon.  Jack witnesses this while FaceTiming with Dylan, using his own to rescue his kid.  Callum and Zoe make their own way to the North Pole while Dylan and Jack mend their estranged relationship.  This latter action gets Jack off the naughty list, freeing Dylan and him.  Jack is thus free to help Callum take on Gryla, though they get a little extra assistance from Krampus, who arrives just as Gryla reverts into a thirty-foot tall ogre.  With Christmas saved, Nick invites Dylan and Jack to tag along as he delivers all the gifts.  As Jack interacts with Dylan, Callum sees Jack as a kid again, meaning the head ELF has regained the Christmas spirit (I suppose) and decides to continue on in his role.  This is basically where the movie ends.

I am lucky I made it to the end of Red One.  I found myself wanting to nap while watching it, and I feel like I am not alone in that sentiment.  The dialog is pretty atrocious, and none of them outside of Evans seemed committed to it, although his accent is a little hard to distinguish.  I get what the makers of the film were attempting, but it is too silly to take seriously.  For example, I did not mention how the United States government is involved in the Santa Claus operation according to the movie, and it is suggested later that the rest of the world’s governments are also in on it.  Thus, when you have F-35s flying escort for Santa’s sleigh, you know it is bordering on the absurd.  The final nail in the goofy coffin is when they show Nick lifting weights, with Callum acting as his spotter.  So, the entire North Pole operation is apparently a part of the military industrial complex.  It is a modern take on an old tale, but it gets us further from the true Christmas spirit as discussed in the introduction.  It is ironic, too, because the film is about regaining the wonder of the season, and they are right to point out that it is missing in so many people today, particularly adults.  My problem with it is more than the movie simply coming out before, spiritually speaking, we should be thinking about the holiday.  It is that it highlights all the wrong aspects of the season.  Granted, this one is less about the gifts the mythical Santa brings to the children of the world.  Instead, it decides to lump St. Nicholas of Myra with all other mythical creatures from throughout humanity’s history.  In other words, Faith is simply mythology, which is not the best way to think about God in general, or Christmas more specifically.

While I will rightly bemoan lumping Catholic saints with mythology in Red One, there is one shining moment that appropriately warmed my heart, though not specifically pertaining to Christmas.  In explaining the naughty list to Jack, Callum says the best lines of the movie.  Callum posits that Jack, and everyone else by extension, has a choice to end up among those likely to get coal in their stocking.  It gets better, though, when he further clarifies that every decision, big or small, is an opportunity to do good.  This is exactly in line with Christian teaching.  In recent reviews, I have highlighted Catholicism’s teaching that the ends do not justify the means.  In this context, this means that even the offhand choices you make, like blowing through that red light that just switched from yellow because you are trying to make it to work on time, is a chance to make the world a little better.  It may seem too commonplace of a hypothetical until you play out potential scenarios.  By committing a moving violation, no matter how slight you may think it is, you could endanger you or someone else.  You might also live in an area that has cameras at intersections in order to catch lawbreakers, which would lead to a ticket.  Finally, there is the violation itself.  Jesus never advocated being an outlaw.  Granted, St. Augustine once said, “An unjust law is no law at all.”  That does not apply to running a red light, no matter how late you might end up being.  Finally, think through all the hypotheticals just discussed had the law not been broken.  You could save a life, avoid having to pay a fine, and be a model citizen of your community.  These are all good things that will help you on your way to the real nice list, that being Heaven, of course.

What would be nicer, though, is not watching Red One.  In the showing I attended, there were a couple little kids, which I thought odd for a late Thursday afternoon.  I cannot imagine their parents were too pleased by the scantily clad women in the Aruba scenes, or the few swear words sprinkled into other places in the dialog.  As such, this one is a hard pass.