Battle of the High-Concept Throwbacks
The director of 'Black Adam' returns with a win; the star of 'Black Adam' returns with a dud.
The director Jaume Collet-Serra and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson made two back-to-back movies, and they’re both awful: 2021’s Jungle Cruise and 2022’s Black Adam. Collet-Serra usually makes fun schlock, like Orphan, The Shallows, the 2005 House of Wax remake, and some of the more well-regarded post-Taken Liam Neeson action thrillers (Non-Stop, The Commuter, etc.). It might not be entirely fair to lay the blame for the abject shittiness of Jungle Cruise and Black Adam at The Rock’s feet. Still, both men have new movies on streaming right now, both of which are Christmas movies that are real throwbacks to the high-concept blockbusters of the ‘80s and ‘90s… but the one Collet-Serra made is a total blast, and the one The Rock made is a total bore. Draw your own conclusions.
The Rock’s movie, Red One, is an action-comedy in which Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons, who has never seemed so bored) gets kidnapped mere days before Christmas; consequently, his head of security, played by The Rock, must team up with a cynical tracker and “naughty lister,” played by Chris Evans, to find and rescue St. Nick in time for him to fly around the globe and deliver gifts to all the good boys and girls (some other talented performers, like Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, and Nick Kroll, also show up to collect paychecks). In other words, it’s not at all that far off from the fake T.V. movie advertised at the beginning of 1988’s Scrooged.
Red One was directed by Jake Kasdan, who is one of the three most talented Kasdans in Hollywood, and written by Chris Morgan, who scripted all the best Fast and Furious movies - but The Rock produced it, and it has his fingerprints all over it. Originally intended for streaming, the $250 million Amazon flick wound up with a theatrical release last month and promptly tanked (it has made roughly $176 million worldwide to date). A lot has been made about The Rock’s heinous behavior during the production of the film, which is relevant only because his character is supposed to care so very deeply about how awful modern society’s population has become; he gets a big speech early on in the movie about how there are more people on the naughty list than the nice list this year, and it would probably come off as insincere regardless, but it really comes off as insincere coming from Johnson.
The movie is lazy and uninspired. Every joke is lame, every story beat is perfunctory, and I dunno where the budget went, but it sure doesn’t look like it made it onto the screen (the abundant CGI is passable if unspectacular). Red One is a throwback in the worst possible way, the kind of picture that makes you wonder who the hell thought this was a good idea in 2024. The answer, of course, is that The Rock thought it was a good idea (his ex-brother-in-law and ongoing producing partner, Hiram Garcia, has a “story by” credit - in other words, the project originated with Johnson). The Rock has plenty of charisma, but his ego won’t allow him to play fun characters anymore - he has to be unquestionably heroic, and must overcome any challenge with ease (he’s like a slightly more emotive Steven Seagal). He could learn something from watching the Indiana Jones and Die Hard flicks of yore: we appreciate when our heroes fear for their lives, because it makes it that much more fun when they win.
That’s readily apparent from watching Carry-On, which you can check out on Netflix. Collet-Serra’s movie is part Die Hard, part Phone Booth: one Christmas Eve, a TSA agent (Taron Egerton) who works at LAX is forced to help a terrorist (Jason Bateman) smuggle a chemical weapon onto a plane, or the terrorist will kill the TSA agent’s newly-pregnant girlfriend (Sofia Carson).
Carry-On cost about a fifth as much as Red One to produce, but the two films’ budgets are inverse to their quality. Carry-On isn’t profound, its characters aren’t three-dimensional, some of the supporting cast members (like Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris, Silicon Valley’s Josh Brener, and Upgrade’s Logan Marshall-Green) are capable of much more than they’re asked to give here, and it requires severe suspension of disbelief. But the screenplay, by video game writer T.J. Fixman (with uncredited rewrites by Blade Runner 2049 and Logan scribe Michael Green), makes a lot of smart decisions.
For example: none of the airport’s other employees, including the hero’s girlfriend, have any idea that they’re in danger. The protagonist consistently has to do terrible things, sometimes to people he cares about very much, without letting them know why he’s acting like such a strange asshole. He has to hurt folks he loves, and he can’t even tell them it’s in their own best interest! It’s like Meet the Parents with life-and-death stakes (or the aforementioned Breaking Bad without the bleakness of cancer patients and drug addicts). I suspect - and I’m not even joking - that Hitchcock would have quite enjoyed Carry-On, ‘cause the entire thing operates on the principle of exploiting dramatic irony.
In contrast to Red One, Egerton’s character is perpetually scared shitless; after one particularly harrowing event, he runs to the bathroom and vomits. It’s exactly the sort of humanizing behavior in which The Rock will never indulge, lest it make him seem too wimpy. But it’s hugely important, because it endears an otherwise fairly thin character to the audience: who amongst us wouldn’t wanna toss our cookies if we were in his shoes? It also makes his eventual gallantry all the more rousing, because we know that he’s throwing himself in harm’s way despite his terror.
Also helping Carry-On tremendously is the creepiness of its villains. After making a big impression in Emily the Criminal and The Penguin, Theo Rossi here plays the Karl to Bateman’s Hans Gruber, and he does such a good job it seems inevitable that he’ll soon be elevated to playing a head heavy of his very own.
But the true MVP of the movie is Bateman himself. Since Arrested Development, Bateman has become the ultimate straight man, eternally composed to the nth degree; when he does dramatic work, like on Ozark or The Outsider, this persona translates to a level of calm that can be (deliberately) unsettling. But this is his first time playing an out-and-out bad guy, and his casting is simply genius: he has the stoicism and confidence of a highly adept professional whose work just happens to be mass murder. You know his imperiousness is going to be his ultimate undoing, but hot damn if he isn’t intimidating AF up until the moment he gets his inevitable comeuppance.
Red One and Carry-On are both movies that fit neatly into the “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore” category. The difference is, Carry-On will make you wish they did still make ‘em like this, whereas Red One will mostly just make you wonder why anyone ever liked The Rock in the first place.