BEFORE: The Christmas countdown moves on - and just like with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when you see Santa Claus, you know we're getting really close to the end. This film is only three years old, but it feels like it's been on the list for a very long time, that just means it's one of those tough-to-link-to films, but I got really lucky this year and a big number of holiday films just kind of fell into place. That can happen - but probably next year I'll be back to crossing off just one or two from the list each time around.
I want to remind everyone that this blog has never taken any advertising money at all, hell, it's never made me any money at all, I'm just doing it for the love of movies. That being said, this film popping up now is a great reminder that the FINAL season of "Stranger Things" is now streaming on Netflix (a company that doesn't need my help, anyway). I managed to watch the first four episodes of Season 5 while we were on the cruise (I downloaded them first so I wouldn't run up a bunch of roaming charges while at sea) and a few more episodes will be released on Christmas Day, because somebody apparently doesn't want you to spend time with your family members. I think the last episode ever comes out on New Year's Day. Good luck getting to sleep.
Edi Patterson carries over from "Nutcrackers".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Fatman" (Movie #4,895)
THE PLOT: When an elite team of mercenaries breaks into a family compound on Christmas Eve, a disgruntled Santa Claus must take them out to save both the hostages and the holiday.
AFTER: Well, we all live in a world where "Die Hard" for sure counts as a Christmas movie ("Die Hard With a Vengeance", not so much). I can remember a time when if somebody said that their favorite Christmas movie was "Die Hard", they would NOT be taken seriously, but now it's a totally legit answer. Well, if you mashed up "Die Hard" with "Bad Santa" and "Home Alone" plus a bit of "The Northman", maybe you'd come up with something like this - or maybe it just needs to be its own thing, because it's kind of really out there. I appreciate the inventiveness, plus the use of the tagline "You Better Watch Out" on the poster. That was kind of MY idea for a non-existent horror movie called "Slay Ride".
Let's get to the details - Santa Claus is real, and he has a magic sack of infinite holding, flying reindeer and an infinite computerized nice/naughty database and all that. But he also stops for frequent bar breaks on Christmas Eve and seems to be fueled by Christmas cookies and also the whiskey from everyone's liquor cabinet. When we see a bartender get puked on by Santa flying off in his sleigh, we realize this isn't quite the typical storybook Santa. More on that in a bit. We also follow Jason and his broken-up racially blended family as they prepare to visit his rich mother on Christmas Eve. Jason is in competition with his sister, Alva, over who's going to run the family company if their mother should choose to retire, only it doesn't seem like that's going to happen any time soon. Alva has a teenfluencer son and a boyfriend who's an action-film actor named Morgan Steel. But that's not very important.
What's important is that Santa Claus finally gets to this same house (he starts in Europe and works his way west around the globe, which makes sense, if he wants to take advantage of the time zones and maximize his efficiency. Yes, I see what you did there.) and gets waylaid by the home-made cookies put out by Trudy, Jason's daughter, and the aged whiskey he finds in Jason's mother's liquor cabinet, causing him to fall asleep. At the same time, a bunch of armed robbers attack the mansion and kill all the security guards, holding the whole family hostage while they try to break into the safe. It's a holiday heist run by "Scrooge" and his gang, all of whom have cool holiday code-names like "Peppermint" and "Gingerbread" and "Candy Cane".
But they don't know that Santa happens to be in the house, and once Trudy makes contact with him via her "magic" walkie-talkie, Mr. Claus knows what he has to do, rescue the family and take down the evil gang, who are all on his naughty list anyway, so really, they've all got it coming. What most people don't know - OK, what everyone didn't know until now because it was made up just for this movie - is that Santa Claus is really a former Viking warrior who became eternal somehow, and decided to make up for his long career pillaging and killing to instead use Christmas magic to travel around the world delivering presents once a year AND occasionally slipping back into warrior mode, whenever necessary or maybe just for funsies. Yeah, maybe this is a bit of a stretch.
Basically this new back-story, added to the usual Santa Claus legend, turns him into something of a superhero. He's already got Ant-Man-like powers if he needs to shrink his size to get through tight chimneys, and tech powers like Iron Man if he's got gear like the sleigh and the nice/naughty list, plus the infinite sack kind of calls Dr. Strange to mind - so this is the first post-MCU Santa, if that makes any sense. Then he's got a hammer like Thor (it's name is Skullcrusher) and he takes a lot of damage like Wolverine or Deadpool - once he starts fighting the terrorist-like thieves, he survives axe wounds and bullets and a few other things, while the bad guys (eventually) start dropping like flies because they don't have the healing powers of Christmas magic.
There are inconsistencies, of course - Santa is both eternal/non-aging and vulnerable/killable. How do we reconcile those two things? He's got the stamina to travel all around the world in one night, but he also gets sleepy when he drinks too much. Can both of those things also be true? He's very clever when it comes to weaponry and keeping track of millions of kids's gift preferences, but he also has no idea how Christmas magic works. So, is he smart or stupid? He's really whatever this film needs him to be at any given moment, I guess.
When we first meet Santa, he's kind of just on the cusp of being fed-up with mankind's greed and materialism, and maybe he's thinking this was going to be his last year giving out the gifts - this was a fine idea and I wish the film could have explored this a bit further, because it's an interesting place for Santa's head to be. But then of course he finds a new purpose in taking down these mercenaries, saving the (somewhat) innocent rich family, and being re-inspired to keep Christmas alive. Until next year, at least. A bit of a programming note that this movie is not for kids, in other words they may not be prepared to watch Santa get horribly injured and almost die, but in the end we get to see him save Christmas and re-dedicate himself to his mission, so just like with the comic-book heroes, the story never really ends.
The thieves manage to break into the safe, but all of the money is gone - one of the family members was just a little faster than them when it came to stealing the fortune. Trudy, meanwhile, sets up traps in the attic, "Home Alone" style, so that when the henchmen come for her, they all manage to die in horrible slapstick fashion - by then Santa has recovered from his initial injuries and is able to use his magic hammer, along with ice skate blades, a snowmobile and a sack of billiard balls, to injure or kill the rest of them - in a very Deadpool-like fashion. The holiday gets put back on track in under two hours, but somehow it also feels like it took a whole lot longer than that. Remember that Santa gets all the way around the world in one night somehow, and we all sweep the inconsistencies there under the rug. After killing a dozen mercenaries, Santa resumes his flight, like it wasn't even a thing.
Whatever else it is, at least this was wildly inventive, and reportedly a sequel is in the works. Umm, sure, OK, let's meet back here in five or six years. Before I go, I just wanted to mention that I've met a few of the actors in tonight's film IRL, I met Beverly D'Angelo back in 2003 or so when she recorded a voice for an animated film titled "Hair High", she had recently given birth to twins fathered by Al Pacino. And this year I met John Leguizamo a couple times, he came to the theater where I work now to speak in Q&A sessions for two films, "Bob Trevino Likes It" and a documentary called "Drop Dead City".
Directed by Tommy Wirkola (director of "What Happened to Monday" and "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters")
Also starring David Harbour (last seen in "Awake"), John Leguizamo (last seen in "Ride Along"), Beverly D'Angelo (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Alex Hassell (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Alexis Louder (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), Cam Gigandet (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Leah Brady, Andre Eriksen, Brendan Fletcher (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Mike Dopud (last seen in "Shooter"), Alexander Elliot, Mitra Suri, Can Aydin, Phong Giang (last seen in "Thunderbolts"), Finn McCager Higgins, Rawleigh Clements-Willis, Stephanie Sy (last seen in "Champions"), Marina Stephenson Kerr (last seen in "Flag Day"), John B. Lowe (last seen in "Reasonable Doubt"), Ray Strachan (last seen in "Cyrano"), Sean Skene, Erik Athavale (last seen in "Nobody"), Adam Hurtig (ditto), Robert Borges.
RATING: 6 out of 10 reasons to be on the Naughty list
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