Listen, Santa has been used in comedies, family dramas and horror films for years – why not an action movie? Mel Gibson’s Santa Claus looks like a mean motherfucker, and I believe a man who can achieve the feats that Santa does every Christmas Eve, climbing up and down all those chimneys for starters, would know how to handle himself. Do you?
Directed by Eshom Nelms and Ian Nelms, little Billy Wenan (Chance Hurstfield) finds coal in his Christmas present, and the rich git hires assassin Jonathan Miller (Walter Goggins) to kill Santa Claus. Jonathan has his own beef with Santa, not getting his wishes granted at Christmas time when he was a boy either; now Jonathan collects other people’s Christmas presents, when he believes they have come from Santa’s workshop. Meanwhile, Chris Cringle a.k.a Santa Claus (Mel Gibson), has his own problems – the state of the world is weighing him down. He’s also forced to hire out his industrial factories and elves to the US military just to make ends meet. Mrs. Cringle (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is his rock, sticking by Santa’s side through tough times, but little do they realise that there’s an assassin closing in, getting closer and closer.
Best of all, this movie leans into some fantastic concepts for Santa and his mythology. The idea that Santa gives the gift of coal to naughty children at Christmas is used in Fatman, not so much as a punishment, but as a lesson, to urge wayward kids onto the straight and narrow. Santa sees this as his duty, but he thinks he’s failing, because his message isn’t getting through, and the number of people growing up to be poor adults is rising. We often think of Santa as being jolly and perpetually happy, but having the ability to know what everyone is thinking and how they’ve lived their lives all the time gets Chris grizzled and disappointed. In Fatman, Santa’s magical ability is that he can look at a person, and know their life’s history – it can’t be so much a personal tracker, because Chris doesn’t realise that Jonathan is coming after him; maybe ‘he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake’ only works on Christmas Eve, I don’t know. But its Chris’s wife Ruth, who prods Chris to think of his glass as half-full, reminding him how influential those gifts in childhood can be to the people who grow up successfully. We all have a favourite childhood toy, I’m sure, and Ruth gives Chris photos to remind Santa how a kitchen playset once led to one adult becoming a chef, and how a toy fire truck influenced another into a noble career as a firefighter.
By the time Jonathan catches up with Santa, I genuinely didn’t know who was going to be left standing! Surely a movie isn’t going kill Santa Claus, but this movie could have; we spend a lot of time with Jonathan and he’s actually an appealing character – I would welcome another movie watching Walter Goggins as this assassin-dude do other things. One line in particular; when Jonathan tells the pet shop owner that she reminds him of his mother, cracked me up. If a hamster-man says he’s a hamster-man, then you better believe he’s a hamster-man. Stop trying to upsell him, lady! Through the movie, you could also make a case that Chris Kringle has lost his way; seeing the military folks cut the elves’ bell-tipped shoes so they can go through security scanners is a heartbreaking moment – if you disagree with me then your heart must be made of stone! During the final stand-off, I was picturing a scenario where Chris is killed, and Jonathan is anointed as the new Santa Claus, similarly to the rules of The Santa Clause, now with a homicidal transition. That ending could’ve come with an added shock that Mrs. Kringle is an omnipotent constant for the position of Santa Claus, and not so much a devoted wife to her one and only Chris Kringle as we might have been led to believe. A weird ending for a weird movie, perhaps.
At the end of the day, I’m glad I saw Fatman. The concepts in the movie are extremely intriguing – I haven’t even mentioned the elves, whom the military believe are so short and pale because all they eat is sugar and never go outside; makes sense. Negatively, I think the movie lacks some meat around those sturdy bones; I found myself waiting for someone to decide they want Santa dead, and then waiting for Jonathan to actually meet up with Mr. Cringle. The plot surrounding the military in Santa’s workshop doesn’t go anywhere, and I’m still not sure if we’re supposed to be happy with the arrangement (since Chris, the elves and the soldiers do get along), or resent the corporate squeeze in on Santa Claus. Ultimately, I think the military is just there to give Jonathan more targets to shoot in the climax. With some other movies, I bitch that there’s not enough character development before the ball starts rolling; in Fatman there’s plenty, but it’s not all that snappy; and carries a tepid tone unbefitting the wonderfully playful premise and Christmas lore that this movie has put a lot of care into. That being said, anyone who suggests that Kevin McCallister from Home Alone is a Christmas sociopath from now on, I’ll be referring them to Billy in Fatman – oh man, this little snot-nosed brat has got some problems.
And who would have gone with ‘Ruth’ as Mrs. Claus’s first name? That’s a verbal smack in the teeth. A quick Google search tells me, there’s no real consensus on Mrs. Claus’s first name, so I hereby propose we stick with Fatman and conclude its Ruth from now on.
3.0
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