There are many questions left unanswered in Red One , but the most pressing has to be: Is the Rock playing an elf or not? His character, Callum Drift, is definitely the head of an organization called ELF, which stands for Enforcement, Logistics, and Fortification (there are multiple cute little acronyms like that in this movie) and which is basically the North Pole’s answer to the Secret Service. Callum isn’t human, and is hundreds of years old, and when he fights, he likes to shrink himself down to approximately half his usual size, a trick whose utility isn’t entirely clear, but that does support the whole elfin theory. And yet, if the obvious joke is that Dwayne Johnson is playing an unlikely 270 cod- and creatine-fueled pounds of Santa’s little helper, the movie never quite gets around to landing it.
It’s as though, because Will Ferrell’s Elf got there first, Red One is content with a gesture in the general region of the known hit. Red One was written by the Fast & Furious franchise’s Chris Morgan and directed by Jake Kasdan, and the whole thing is like that — rife with elements that are reminiscent of better movies without ever bothering to follow through on what it’s aping. If Red One were a disaster, it’d be more interesting.
Instead, it’s a technically passable action-comedy transparently stitched together from parts scavenged from other movies. Its brawny take on Santa, played by an unsettlingly swole J. K.
Simmons, is reminiscent of the one in .
