Fatman Movie Review

Bad-ass Santa

by Casimir Harlow
Movies & TV Shows Review

22

Fatman Movie Review

Gibson's edgy twist on Santa steps one bloody foot too far for left-field family entertainment at Christmas, but also treads too gently when it should really embrace its wacky dark fairytale whims.

Fatman has some great ingredients, and a compelling pitch. Mel Gibson as a grumpy, beleaguered, gun-wielding Santa. Walton Goggins as the assassin hired to take him out after he delivers a piece of coal to an entitled rich brat. Christmas movies seldom have this kind of potential - without a romcom element in sight here, and with no irritating children to be found, instead trading Christmas cheer for assault rifles and explosives.

 

Christmas movies seldom have this kind of potential  

Brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms did the solid John Hawkes noir Small Town Crime, which debuted on Netflix in the UK, and they clearly wanted to fashion another dark mystery outing here, but it's simply too colourful to be played straight. The story reinvents Christmas as a dying tradition overrun by commerce and in need of government subsidy to survive, and positions Chris Cringle as a Santa who's just about run out of magic, trying his best to keep optimistic about things but facing the unwelcome prospect of having to outsource his Elves to do work for the military in order to keep things afloat. It's a reasonably clever backdrop, putting a contemporary spin on the classic myth, but the core tale of an offended brat who hires an assassin to take out Santa never plays out as good as it sounds on paper, at least not until the final few minutes.

Fatman

Gibson's had some great success with indie flicks since his Hollywood exile - Get the Gringo aka How I Spent My Summer Vacation was an excellent little cousin to his earlier classic Payback, the brutal Dragged Across Concrete was evidence alone he could probably pull off another Lethal Weapon, and his upcoming Boss Level will hopefully put him back in the limelight a little, a great little gem of an actioner blending Groundhog Day live-die-repeat gimmickry with Crank fun. He's as perfectly cast here as Kurt Russell is in The Christmas Chronicles, as comfortable shooting cans in the snow as he is calling upon his loyal wife to have faith that this will merely be a lull in the Christmas Spirit department, and things always work out in the end. He isn't, however, a miracle-worker, and the writer/directors simply don't know what to do with him for the majority of the runtime, setting the stage with a premise that'll have you hooked, and giving you a few satirical beats with the military involvement, but then completely dropping the ball for the next half hour where almost nothing of consequence occurs.

It's as if they had a great pitch, and some kind of an idea of how they wanted to conclude things, but zero clue how to get from one to the next, at least not in a feature of longer than 60 minutes in length. And at 100 minutes, Fatman more than outstays its welcome.

 

It's as if they had a great pitch, and some kind of an idea of how they wanted to conclude things, but zero clue how to get from one to the next  

There's really two ways this film could have worked out pretty well. First option, they could have shot for an Elf / Home Alone vibe, tone down the violence and guns in favour of mere threat, and expound a similar-ish story (I mean, it's got a lot of comparisons to Christmas Chronicles 2 in terms of story, just handled for a very different audience) which would make for a fun, eventful Christmas movie that families could enjoy at a pushing-the-boundaries-of-PG level. After all, there's little if any swearing, and almost all violence is off-screen for the first 80 minutes of the movie, so it's only the finale which would need reworking. Second option is they could have gone full-tilt, and explore the brutality Santa clearly experiences on the job (which is only hinted at in some of the film's more interesting moments), explicitly showing just what the assassin does for a living, and affording a more measured, adult feature - rather than a family-friendly romp that suddenly lands in something approximating a bloodbath come the end.

Despite not committing to either ideal, and thus largely losing the impact of the end result, and despite wasting Goggins in another nonsense vaguely eccentric villain role (c.f. Ant-Man and The Wasp), Gibson just about makes it worth a watch - which you could apply to almost all of his lesser movies - although this is the kind of feature you should really wait and watch for 'free' on Netflix or Amazon when it inevitably appears there. The beginning and the very end are almost a whole different animal to the rest of the flabby feature, which makes for an intriguing trailer, but a disappointing full feature. 

Scores

Verdict

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6

6
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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