Red One, on Prime Video

According to scientists, polar bears really belong at the top of the planetary food chain, because so many of them have a taste for eating people. Therefore, a big talking polar bear like Agent Garcia ought to provide all the protection Santa Claus needs. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is also considered fairly formidable for a mere mortal. Yet, somehow the bad guys still kidnap Santa while both ELF (Enforcement, Logistics, and Fortification) Agents were on the job. Even though he is only human, Johnson’s Callum Drift won’t take this threat to Christmas laying down, so he decides to flip the clueless hacker who helped facilitate the crisis in Jake Kasdan’s Red One, which starts streaming today on Prime Video.

Agent Drift intends to retire after this Christmas, so you know what that always means: trouble. Masked mercs abduct Santa spiriting him away through a hole in the North Pole security system. Of course, a blame-America-first leftist like Tulsi Gabbard would say Santa was asking for it, because of his security arrangement with NATO. Regardless, it took some serious computing power to detect the secret location of Santa’s workshop, but Bah-humbugging black-hat and self-described bounty-hunter Jack O’Malley inadvertently supplied the necessary data by hacking national science networks.

To avoid further beatings from Drift, O’Malley agrees to work with ELF to follow the trail of his anonymous client, who turns out to Gryla, the Icelandic winter witch. As a former associate of Santa’s adopted brother Krampus, she always believed Santa was too lenient on the “naughty-listers,” like O’Malley. By stealing Santa’s powers, she intends to finally deal out the punishment she believes they richly deserve.

Chris Morgan’s screenplay cleverly incorporates a lot of slightly macabre Christmas lore, including Gryla and Krampus. However, Kiernan Shipka’s portrayal of the Christmas witch and the special effects surrounding her are consistently overshadowed by the more colorful characters. That definitely includes Kristofer Hivju’s imposing Krampus, who is more grouch than demon.

In truth, nobody is more colorful than J.K. Simmons, who looks quite fit—and even downright cut—as old kris. Frankly, he makes cookies and milk look a better muscle building supplement than any GNC powder. As usual, Simmons can land a sharp one-liner, but his sarcasm is gentler this time around—because he is Santa. He also develops great chemistry with Bonnie Hunt, who really should have had more screentime as Mrs. Claus.

Of course, the Rock does his thing, which includes milking Drift’s humorlessness for humor. Basically, Johnson acts like the film is titled The Fast and the Jolly, which should be totally fine with his fans. It is also nice to see Lucy Liu get to kick some butt to as Zoe Harlow, the chief of the clandestine MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority) agency. However, Chris Evans’ portrayal of O’Malley, the hacker and jerkweed absentee father, needed more charm and less smugness.

Chris Evans Goes Grunge: Puncture

Would you hire a tattooed barely functioning drug addict to litigate a major anti-trust case? Mike Weiss made A Civil Action’s Jan Schlictmann look like a corporate clock-watcher. He got better results too, despite burning out spectacularly. His tragically flawed character is portrayed with intriguing nuance, whereas his final case is presented in the most manipulatively simplistic terms possible in Adam and Mark Kassen’s based-on-a-true-story Puncture (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Weiss is something of a junkie savant, whose drug fueled benders produce flashes of legal brilliance. He and his more conventional partner Paul Danziger get by on a combination of ambulance chaser and referrals from Houston wheeler-dealer Daryl King. The latest cast-off from their connected friend’s firm involves a nurse, Vicky Rogers, who contracted AIDS from an infected needle.

Through Rogers, Weiss and Danziger meet her mad inventor friend, Jeffrey Dancourt, who developed a safety syringe that would prevent future accidental needle sticks. Yet, hospitals are unwilling or unable to buy it. Evidently, the group purchasing organizations (GPO) designed to give health providers greater buying clout are only interested in buying from their cronies.

Not surprisingly, Puncture ignores the obvious irony that Obamacare is ostensibly built upon the same principle of greater economies through fewer purchasers that is supposedly so nefarious in GPOs. It is not big on irony in general, presenting Weiss and Danziger as earnest legal crusaders, even as the former sinks further into a drug-induced haze. In fact, the film’s greatest moment of clarity comes from a sympathetic senator, who bluntly tells the increasingly erratic Weiss his cause is just, but he is so toxic, she could never invite him to testify before her committee.

Chris Evans does manic grunge shockingly well, conveying Weiss’s descent with compelling honesty and directness. Who knew he had it in him? If Puncture were more Lost Weekend and less Silkwood, it would have been a much more effective film. Instead, we have to sit through lectures from Michael Biehn’s “Red,” a character who seems to exist only to explain how awful plastic syringes have been for the third world. The film is practically like Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest, yelling “no plastic needles.”

Despite the film’s determination to play it safe, Evans gets some distinctive support from Marshall Bell as the socially awkward Dancourt and Brett Cullen as the silky smooth corporate attorney Nathaniel Price. Unfortunately, co-director Mark Kassen proves to be fairly middling on both sides of the camera, coming across dull instead of memorably nebbish as the second banana, Danziger.

In Puncture, Evans proves he can carry a film otherwise saddled with a by-the-numbers predictability. While it might be an important film for his professional development, it is not something movie patrons need to rush out and see ASAP. A so-so outing in nearly every other respect, Puncture opens this Friday (9/23) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.