★★

To decry Red One for its commercialist cynicism feels somewhat disingenuous. Were you expecting different? It’s Dwayne Johnson…at Christmas…with a sci-fi blaster. Captain America’s his side kick. If anything, given the cynicism fuelling most Christmas films these days, Red One’s chronic disinterest in hiding the fact almost feels honourable. Almost. The critique can but fall on deaf ears on the grounds that Red One is exactly the film it set out to be. It’s Hobbs and Shaw with silver bells on. Highly competent soullessness. Which is to say, an expensively executed evisceration of every ounce of heart that is supposed to beat within the Christmas message. The commercialised one, that is.

The director here is Jake Kasdan, whose work on the recent Jumanji sequels ought to have heralded more warmth and wit. Alas, he works with a breathtakingly unoriginal screenplay from Fast and Furious regular Chris Morgan. Familiar themes and ideas come crowbarred into a narrative likely retooled from the Hobbs and Shaw sequel that never was. It is, in every sense, a Dwayne Johnson vehicle, one hinged entirely on his typical schtick. The result is a Johnson on cruise control, unchallenged and pushing his weakest work in years. He doesn’t look to be having fun – few here do – and, if the rumours are to be believed, wasn’t.

Johnson plays Callum Drift, chief commander of the North Pole’s Enforcement Logistics and Fortification team and right hand man to J. K. Simmons’ Saint Nick – code name: Red One. The ‘Santa Clause’ operation has come on some way since the good old days, with the idea here being that Santa now works in tandem with a decidedly American military organisation called MORA. They’re headed up by a thoroughly wasted Lucy Liu and hint heavily at the film’s want to spawn its own cinematic universe of modern day mythos. It also reeks hideously of Amazon – it’s an MGM production – with a weird obsession for the logistics of Christmas entirely missing the point of the magic. Simmons’ Santa lifts weights, calorie counts and resides beneath a high-tech, camouflaged dome in the Artic. Arthur Christmas took a similar angle without feeling so capitalist.

When a black ops team of scoundrels, led by Kiernan Shipka’s Grýla, breaches the dome and kidnaps Santa, MORA recruit Level 4 Naughty-lister Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), the world’s number one mercenary hacker, to help save Christmas. Much as we know Jack’s a rotter – he literally steals candy from a baby – he’s a disappointing dad so primed for a journey to the Nice List. Johnson will help him get there, albeit reluctantly. Maybe he has something to learn from Jack in return? You’d expect this union to inspire buddy hijinks and humour but it never comes. From open to close, Red One is a weirdly unfunny film. It’s not that the jokes fall flat, they’re just not there.

Instead, the thrust is a string of combative encounters, first with giant snowmen on an Aruban beach and then in the lair of Kristofer Hivju’s Krampus. Hiviju, at least, delivers a touch of flair, bringing flushes of camp to the role of Santa’s villainous counterfoil. More of this would have been most welcome. Certainly so in the face of the undue seriousness that otherwise burdens the film. It’s curious. No matter how many times a stony-faced Johnson or Liu warns that Christmas is threatened, this never feels a realistic or urgent threat. Perhaps this is owing to the unusual decision made to depict Santa’s gifts as being a superfluous addition to the store bought gifts children receive from Mum and Dad. Would the youngsters of Red One’s world even notice if Santa didn’t show? Praise be for Amazon, eh.

What’s more, with violence too dark for the littlest audiences and a tone too daft for Mum and Dad, it’s hard to actually work out at whom Red One is aimed. It’s not even dumb fun. It’s not fun and it’s too slick to be dumb. In a decade or so, AI will knock this sort of thing out for half the budget. Can we be sure they haven’t already? Excuse the cynicism, it’s infectious.

T.S.