Well, if nothing else, hopefully this film’s mere existence will be enough to finally put that boring-as-all-hell “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” debate to rest. Seriously, even as a meme, that shit got old a long time ago.
In all seriousness, though, this is a pretty interesting spin on the Die Hard formula. Putting Santa (David Harbour at both his grizzliest and his cheeriest) as the guy in the wrong place at the wrong time opens some interesting ideas, and with how the film opens, showing Santa drinking his sorrows about what Christmas has turned into, it offers a quasi-Reclaim The Holiday vibe. No, not in the sense of keeping everything explicitly religious; I mean as in Christmas being the time of goodwill toward men and all that junk.
Even the simple act of pitting him against a group of mercenaries, who are trying to pull a heist for the fortune of the obscenely wealthy Lightstone family, opens up possibilities for interrogating how much the very idea of Santa comes from a privileged place. Magical man flies around the world just giving all the children of the world gifts? Well, at least the ones whose parents suspiciously can afford them on their own? Eat the rich cinema is in vogue right now, so why not try it?
Well, it makes some attempt at commenting on that, but as far as the materialism side of things, it’s all very superficial (how ironic). The Lightstone family are indeed shown to be greedy little shits, from Edi Patterson’s drunkard Alva (although, admittedly, she practised for this with Knives Out) and her vain husband Morgan (Cam Gigandet), their influencer son Bert (Alexander Elliot), and the matriarch Gertrude (Beverly D’Angelo). But aside from them just generally being obnoxious, there’s not a lot directly said about their status or even getting into John Leguizamo’s Scrooge and his own reasons for depriving them of the money. There’s a bit near the end involving the literal burning of money to keep warm, but its effectiveness is cut very short when someone clarifies that they burned about half a million dollars out of 300 million. Insert joke about ‘charitable donations’ here.
However, that’s not to say that the Santa angle doesn’t work at all; just that Josh Miller and Pat Casey (the same duo behind the recent Sonic The Hedgehog movies) missed an opportunity with it. As a proper Santa-centric Christmas movie, it’s rather bizarre just how sentimental this gets. The best scenes here that don’t involves fist fights are when Santa and Trudy (Leah Brady) are just talking with each other over a walky-talky, as it’s here where the Yuletide spirit is at its most potent. Santa himself isn’t all that bogged down with lore in terms of who exactly he is and how his powers work (as the film keeps almost-insecurely reminding us), sticking just to the iconography and his place as a patron saint of children. And while Dominic Lewis’ aggressively cheesy soundtrack, with its near-constant variations on old Christmas carols, threatens to overload the production at times, Harbour’s performance here keeps its heart in the right place.
Well, that and the insane amounts of gore on display. Director Tommy Wirkola has experience with frostbitten high-concept films like this thanks to his work on the Nazi zombie movie Dead Snow, and he brings a similarly delirious sense of fun to the action scenes here. There is a lot of bloodshed in this thing, up to and including a creative use for a snowblower, and it only grows more bonkers as the film goes on. There’s also EightySeven’s secret weapon in stunt coordinator Jonathan Eusebio, who brings dependable and hard-hitting work to the fight scenes. He even maintains the ‘fighting style as characterisation’ method that I love seeing from Leitch/Stahelski, with Santa being strong, capable of magic, and who may or may not have been an extra in The Northman before donning the red suit, but he’s still out of practice for this kind of combat and it shows. If you’re gonna redo Die Hard, keeping the lead character’s vulnerability was the right choice.
I’m weirdly torn on this one. On one hand, as a blood-splattered action flick, this is crazy amounts of fun and got some genuine “ho-ho-ho-ly shit” reactions out of me. But on the other hand, it feels a bit lightweight in comparison to some of the ideas it brings up (of its own volition, I might add; this isn’t just me actively looking for shit), and doesn’t make full use of what its premise brings up. But hey, I’m willing to cut it some slack on that front, as it still succeeds as a holiday film, both in its amount of earnest Yuletide cheer and edgier sense of humour. It could’ve been more, but it’s still a movie about Santa Claus beating the shit out of armed thugs at Christmas; enjoy it for what it is.
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