Countdown to TixMas #11: Fat Man (Just the Ticket #118)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The TixMaster

'Tis the eleventh day of the Countdown to TixMas, and all is quiet.

So I'll keep this short and sweet, just like an elf and his diet.

I couldn't get tickets to Violent Night

So in today's Just the Ticket, I review that movie, but light.

It stars a troubled director with Passion

And a Justified actor who's always in fashion.

Like and comment, as I know that you can,

And read on as I review 2020's Fatman!

Fatman's plot is pretty simple: 2020 was a terrible year that inflated the Naughty List and drove Santa's operation into a recession (along with every other business), and a rich, entitled asshole with bad hair who mistreats his family and house staff (a child character in the movie, not the actual, living person you're thinking of...) sends a toy-obsessed hitman to kill Santa when he receives coal for Christmas.

Some might balk at the "gritty reboot" angle that Fatman takes with the Santa Claus character (here named Chris Kringle and played by Passion Of the Christ director and paternally indoctrinated anti-Semite Mel Gibson because the line between ironic and appropriate is a blurry one drawn in Schedule One psychotropics) and lore. Instead of being an intangible legend that parents use as a materialist bargaining chip against their children, Chris Kringle is a real person who lives near the fictional town of North Pine, runs a government-subsidized toy-manufacturing business, employs elves who supernaturally metabolize sugar which allows them to work with minimal sleep (I mentioned drugs earlier, right?), can read people's souls, has super-strength, and owns several guns. His wife, Ruth (played by frequent political thriller actress, Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a voice of reason and encouragement for Chris as he navigates the Workshop's mounting financial troubles.

The attempt at realistic Santa lore slows the film's pace in the second act, when Kringle is pressured to accept a weapons-manufacturing contract from the U.S. Government as a way of supplementing his Workshop's budget cuts, and the interaction between the soldiers and the elves during this time hint that Fatman could have spun off in a much bleaker, wackier direction (militarized elves, magic-powered war machines, global conquest, etc.). But as the movie stands, the whole military contract subplot only serves to bring heavily armed but disposable red-shirts to the Workshop so the hitman character can be put over as a legitimate threat to Old Man Santa. Otherwise, they and their plot reason for being there could have been totally cut from the movie with little consequence for how it all plays out.

Lore aside, the best aspect of Fatman for me was Walton Goggins' (Boyd Crowder in Justified) performance as hitman/Skinny Man, Jonathan Miller. Goggins does off-kilter, sinister characters exceptionally well, and the Skinny Man to Gibson's Fatman fits Goggins perfectly in that regard. The lighting, camera angles, and other cinematography tricks employed while Goggins is onscreen only serve to enhance the menace and subtle, absurdist comedy of his character, and the writing gives way more for Goggins to play with than a "naughty kid sends hitman after Santa," pre-pandemic, limited theatrical release (which was produced by two of the Pineapple Express guys and distributed by the company that created Power Rangers) deserves. Even the way Skinny Man Miller manages to track down the nigh-untraceable Santa was pretty inventive (and oversimplified in all the right places). It's also worth noting here that between Fatman and Switchback (in which he was credited as Walt Goggins), he has been in films with both leads from the Lethal Weapon film series.

By the way, Lethal Weapon is a Christmas movie; Die Hard is a Christmas movie; tomato is an acidic fruit that goes on pizza, and so is pineapple.

Bottom line: Fatman was far more creative than it had any right to be, suffered from second-act pacing issues that could have been easily left to the cutting room floor, had a charismatic villain, and ended in a satisfying way. It's not the greatest thing ever, and as much as it tries to be, Fatman doesn't quite hit that "bad, but fun" mark, either. It was better than I expected, though, so....

C+

Stay Tuned, wait smart, and save those Ticket Stubs because tomorrow, I plan to Bring Back the Soundtrack for the twelfth day of my Countdown to TixMas, where I'll be reviewing an actual soundtrack for The Retaliators! Spoilers for my Christmas day review!?

Merry Christmas,

and TixMaster,

Out.