Red One - 4K Blu-ray Review

Movie
Oh boy, Red One had my spidey sense tingling back in November just from the trailer, and it wasn’t exactly calming down 4 months later when I got the 4K UHD disc in to review for you guys. I mean, I've liked Dwayne Johnson over the years, but the trailer felt more like the Jumanji movies blended with the gasping scraps that are the MCU these days, blended together with a wafer thing Christmas plot to round it all out. In November it bombed at the box office worse than Black Adam, and I wasn’t exactly going in with very high expectations. Granted, I’m the kind of low-budget dumb action movies, and I’m easily pleased if I’m having fun (I had an absolute ball with the trash that was Fast X) and I like The Rock punching people in the face, so I was going to give it a fair shake. Sadly even with my low expectations, I left feeling disappointed. Not because Red One is a horrible movie that made me want to tear my hair out, but because it simply landed in that middle ground of “not horrible, but not in any way memorable” either.

The film revolves around Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons), his hulking secret service like bodyguard Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), and the upcoming holiday season. Drift is about to retire as he’s worn out from watching more and more people show up on the naughty list, while good old St. Nick is trying to keep him around for one last time. However, things go sideways when Santa gets kidnapped after his North Pole base is compromised by super hacker Jack “The Wolf” O’Malley (Chris Evans). Turns out that O’Malley isn’t a super spy or the instigator, but rather is being used by a mysterious entity who wants to capture Santa for her own ends.

Grabbing Jack and utilizing his intelligence skills to track down the origin of the job, Drift sets out to get back Santa before it’s too late. The pair soon realize that things are MUCH worse than expected, as their supervillain turns out to be an ancient mythological enemy who used to align with Krampus (Kristofer Hivju coated in practical and CGI effects) and is now out to permanently punish all the people on the naughty list once and for all. To do that, they need Santa’s powers, and a lot of CGI fighting to get back jolly old St. Nick before there’s no more Christmas.

I read somewhere online back in November that Red One was a vanity project by The Rock, and that it feels like two different films mashed into one. On that, I actually agree. It was OBVIOUSLY meant to be the mega-blockbuster film of the Christmas Season, with Dwayne Johnson’s production company behind the whole thing, but for some reason, the entire affair feels like it’s two film ideas slapped together. The first half of the film is a solid “Let's find Santa” adventure film with the 24 Hours style “good cop, bad guy” humor thrown in, with Chris Evans playing the smart-talking bad guy, and The Rock playing his hulking Secret Service like cop character. The second half of the film veers off straight into what can only be described as Hellboy 2 type mythological characters. The film takes a darker edge, going full bore into Krampus, the ancient Icelandic witch Gryla, all wrapped up with Christmas-colored wrapping paper.
The story itself is kind of clever, but the film falls apart fairly early on. The entire thing is a gigantic budgeted action adventure movie that is just LOADED with cheap exposition dumps, tons of CGI action, and cheesy one-liners to push the plot along. Not to mention this whole thing feels like they took leftover MCU powers to give to Callum Drift, along with the same laughable CGI of Phase 5 Marvel. It doesn’t work that well at the moment, let alone in hindsight where you start actually questioning what you watched. Was it a bad movie? Not really. It wasn’t that bad, and if it didn’t have a bloated $250 million budget that was meant to be a huge tentpole film, I might have given it a more favorable rating. This was the sort of film you show your kids on a Saturday afternoon to keep them busy. It’s fun enough, and got some decent action, but is ENTIRELY forgettable.




Rated PG-13 for action, some violence, and language.




4K Video: Video:

Warner Brothers 4K UHD of Red One ticks off most of the boxes for a good 4K presentation, with rich colors, solid details, and a CGI-heavy set. There are plenty of detail levels that push into the great category, and the Dolby Vision really does enhance the black levels. I actually forgot to turn on Dolby Vision on my Sony X800m2 for about 30 minutes, and after turning on the DV it was a rather solid difference. Reds and blues push for deeper saturation, and the shadow details are more defined. My only real complaint is that the film seems strangely soft for a native 4K disc. It’s still in the very good category, but it’s not as razor-sharp as I was expecting.







Audio:

On the other hand, the Dolby Atmos track found on the disc (along with a 5.1 Dolby Digital track for some reason) is quite the stunner. It needs about a 2DB push higher on the receiver, but once pushed to reference levels the track simply shines. This is a wild and kinetic ride from beginning to end, with tons of action, amazing use of the overheads and surrounds during the flying scenes (Santa’s sleigh taking off at the beginning is awesome for surround fans), and the bass is to die for. It’s not so bassy that it becomes another Fast and Furious movie, but its well balanced and more than capable for the heavy lifting.







Extras:

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To wrap this all up I’m going to reiterate my initial thoughts on the film. It’s not a bad movie, but neither is Red One the giant blockbuster they wanted it to be. It sadly falls into that middle-of-the-road territory where it’s not offensive, but not exactly engaging either. It’s just a film that happened to be made. Albeit with a $250 million budget that barely netted $185 million worldwide. The Rock is starting to become a bit derivative and bland in his later years and feels more like a brand “image” rather than an actor. Chris Evans does well utilizing his pre-Marvel The Losers/Fantastic 4 acting style which was kind of refreshing. But at the end of the day Red One just “exists”. The 4K UHD looks rather good and sounds better, but like most Amazon-produced movies (MGM being owned by Amazon now) the film comes with ZERO extras. This is going to fall squarely into the “dumb rental” category.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, J.K. Simmons, Kristofer Hivju, Kiernan Shipka
Directed by: Jake Kasdan
Written by: Chris Morgan, Hiram Garcia
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), French, Spanish DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Korean, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Swedish
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 123 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: March 4th, 2025

Ohhh... BUST! I think I'll skip this one. Though, I might need to check out the bass!

I don't think I can sit through it.... nah.