From Ryan Cordaro

I’m not sure when it exactly started, but there really hasn’t been a lot of new mainstream Christmas/holiday movies that have come out. The last one I can really remember off the top of my head is Violent Night, the action movie with David Harbour as Santa Clause beating up a group of criminals like he was John Wick. Even then, though, that’s an action movie with a Christmas coat of paint on it. Whenever I think of a Christmas movie, the first one that comes to mind for me is Elf, but we have a whole stable of Christmas movies that come on every year. Because of that, I’m always open to see what could be the next entry in the Christmas movie canon. Now, The Rock has decided to throw his hat into the ring with Red One.

The story for Red One is refreshingly simple. The head of North Pole security, Callum Drift, has to team up with a bounty hunter to find and rescue Santa Claus to save Christmas. I have to admit, I am surprised that this wasn’t a movie that was going onto a streaming platform like Netflix or Apple TV+. How I first heard about this movie was actually stemming from controversy surrounding its biggest star, producer and main actor Dwayne Johnson. There were a lot of headlines surrounding The Rock’s behavior on set that included showing up late to set and sometimes not at all, which also included a viral tidbit about Johnson peeing into water bottles. While it applied to some of his past movies, a lot of these stories stemmed from the set of Red One. I don’t think that would affect the quality of the movie, but I think having a new Christmas movie to put on is a nice bit of fun, so this could be a fun watch closer to the holidays.

Red One stars Dwayne Johnson (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the upcoming The Smashing Machine), Chris Evans (Knives Out, the upcoming Materialists), Lucy Liu (Chicago, the upcoming Presence), Kiernan Shipka (Twisters, Longlegs), Bonnie Hunt (The Green Mile, Rain Man), Nick Kroll (Sausage Party, Don’t Worry Darling), Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones, Twilight of the Gods), Wesley Kimmel (WandaVision, The Mandalorian), and J. K. Simmons (Whiplash, the upcoming Saturday Night).

MGM is going to release Red One in theaters on November 15th, 2024.

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