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‘Red One’ holiday action comedy; ‘Absolution’ for a crime story
“RED ONE” RATED PG-13
What exactly is the holiday cheer to be found in “Red One,” a picture that has action and comedy along with a heavy dose of surreal fantasy which seems a lot more like science-fiction drama than a celebration of the Christmas spirit?
Well-known actors take center stage with Dwayne Johnson displaying qualities befitting his physical persona of “The Rock” and Chris Evans shedding his Captain America image for that of a scoundrel with a skewed moral compass.
The titular character for “Red One” is J.K. Simmons’ Santa Claus, or known to his family and friends as Nick, who has the code name “Red One” for his security detail, and we thought only U.S. presidents had code names bestowed by the Secret Service.
We first see Chris Evans’ Jack O’Malley as a delinquent youth acting like a shakedown artist. In adulthood, Jack is a deadbeat dad completely lacking in scruples when stealing other people’s lattes and newspapers before retreating to his job of hacking computers and being a tracker for hire.
With Christmas Eve around the corner, the North Pole comes under attack by evil forces connected to the Christmas witch Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), who wants to punish all the allegedly naughty people in the world and not just children.
The first step in Gryla’s misguided plan is the abduction of Santa Claus to be imprisoned in a fortified snow globe, so that Nick won’t be able to fulfill his yuletide mission of delivering presents.
Operating under the underground moniker “The Wolf,” Jack is surprised as anyone that Santa’s head of security, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), has noticed his apparently inadvertent disclosure of the location of Santa’s domain to the bad guys.
Considering that the unattached Jack is estranged not only from his son and the boy’s mother, one can easily figure that a reconciliation with his offspring, Dylan (Wesley Kimmel), is in the offing since this is a Christmas movie after all.
But first, Jack reluctantly joins Callum in an odd couple buddy team in the hunt for Santa, facing off against an assortment of otherworldly henchmen, including Santa’s estranged brother Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) who looks like a cross between a Viking warrior and a horned space demon.
One of Callum’s neat tricks is a shape-shifting ability to respond to physical attacks, as well as turning toy cars into real ones for chase scenes and action figures into fighting machines.
The banter, such as it is, between stoic Callum and sardonic Jack is pretty much the comedic element here. “Red One” offers enough diversion to be enjoyably watchable for the most part and that may be enough.
‘ABSOLUTION’ RATED R
Ever since the 2008 action thriller “Taken” about a former CIA operative tracking down Albanian human traffickers for kidnapping his daughter in Paris, Liam Neeson has burnished his career with ongoing films in the same action genre.
Never mind that Neeson is now in the eighth decade of his life, he appears not to be slowing down in taking roles where a certain amount of mayhem and rough physical activity remains obligatory.
Unlike his usual good guy on a virtuous mission, Neeson’s character, only fittingly known as Thug, is an aging gangster who attempts to reconnect with his estranged children to rectify his personal failings.
Thug’s desire for absolution has much to do with a terminal illness with the incapacitating neurological malady of CTE, which usually afflicts athletes suffering too many concussions. Too many blows to the head apparently have happened to Thug, a former boxer.
Even though Thug is fading mentally and physically, he’s still capable of responding to deadly threats with his own lethality. The mystery centers on who wants to eliminate Thug before irreversible brain damage takes its deadly toll.
Having worked for crime boss Charlie Conner (Ron Perlman) for decades, Thug is tasked with providing tutelage to Conner’s lunkhead son Kyle (Daniel Diemer) to learn the ropes to eventually to take over his father’s criminal enterprise.
Meanwhile, Thug would like to repair what might be a lifetime of anguish for his alienated daughter Daisy (Frankie Shaw), who really wants nothing to do with her father, even though her young son Dre (Terrence Pulliam) appears curious about the mysterious grandfather.
Reconnecting with family is not helped when Thug can’t remember the name of his deceased son or where he’s buried. Perhaps he should have family information on the notebook used to keep track of things.
Don’t expect this film to be a non-stop action picture. It’s about an hour into the story before Thug even throws a punch, and while violence is toned down, the killer instinct of an aging criminal still emerges when the occasion arises.
The pace of “Absolution” is probably not exactly what fans of a righteous avengers usually played in action films by Liam Neeson would expect. As such, it’s a bit of slog with intermittent action, and you might as well wait until it ends up on a streaming service sooner than later.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
