"Fatman" committed to being an off-kilter, coal-black Christmas present

Fatman (2020) 

“Fatman” is an off-kilter, coal-black holiday thriller that doesn’t go too far beyond its warped premise. Then again, the film is so committed to just going for it that one might not be able to resist, particularly when Santa Claus is evading a naughty hitman with a pet hamster in tow. Co-writing and co-directing brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms (2017’s “Small Town Crime”) find a way to blur the line between Christmas standards and harsh violence into a cohesive package that shouldn’t work but does. In the early going, it does give off the feeling of whiplashing between three different movies, but once the plot threads converge, “Fatman” is a darkly wacky ride.

In an off-the-grid farmhouse in North Peak, Chris Cringle (Mel Gibson) and his supportive, cookie-making knitting expert wife, Ruth (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), are encountering their lowest year during the busiest time of the year. More and more children are misbehaving, and Santa takes his financial frustrations out with target practice. Seeing his income and the elves’ income cut in half, he is forced to take a government contract and allow his workshop to be a military base. Meanwhile, one of the naughty children, entitled rich kid Billy Wenan (a smackable Chance Hurstfield), only gets a runner-up ribbon at the science fair. To change the outcome, he hires a ruthless hitman (Walton Goggins), who always gets the job done. Come Christmas morning, when Billy wakes up to a gift-wrapped lump of coal under his tree, that same hitman is enlisted again by the “little shit” to go collect Santa’s head. There’s a war on Santa, but Billy will learn the hard way that he should have been nice this year. 

As wonky as its tone can be, “Fatman” plays its absurdity as straight as a Liam Neeson action thriller — or even a Mel Gibson action thriller of yore. For every Edmund Gwenn, Tim Allen, Billy Bob Thornton, or Kurt Russell playing Santa Claus (or some form of him, whether it’s the genuine article or shopping mall Santa), one would be hard-pressed to imagine Mel Gibson (2020's "Force of Nature"), out of all the Christian actors over 60, as jolly Father Christmas on the Coke bottle. Gibson certainly has his anti-Semitic baggage off-screen that he’ll never let down, and while he isn’t exactly fat enough to earn the title, this is a more realistic form of the grizzled toymaker. Gibson’s Chris is less romanticized and more of a gruff, world-weary grump who likes to take a flask on his sleigh. He seems to really have his heart in this role, and yet Gibson isn’t even the one throwing the movie over the top. That would be his nemesis. If Walton Goggins needed to play just one more beady-eyed bad guy, let it be his “Skinny Man.” This batshit-bonkers turn allows Goggins to bring more than enough color and quirkiness to a psychopath who's still bitter from childhood, and we love to hate him. 

The Nelms put on display a slick, clean visual style even in a Christmas movie that isn’t drenched in holly-jolly, red-and-green iconography. Arterial sprays and bullet-riddled bodies, though, do spatter a lot of red on the white snow in a classic spaghetti-western showdown that’s tense yet playfully staged. As for the film’s heart when we need some the most, it belongs to the lovely Marianne Jean-Baptiste (2019’s “In Fabric”). She is the source of much-needed warmth and voice of reason as level-headed Ruth (or Mrs. Claus), and casting Gibson and Jean-Baptiste as the Cringles is so offbeat and tender that it actually works. “Fatman” isn’t exactly a merry romp or even the insanely outrageous exploitation flick one might expect, but for the adults, it is a demented genre present curiously packaged with surprising charm.

Grade: B

Saban Films released “Fatman” (100 min.) in select theaters on November 13, 2020, followed by a digital and VOD release November 24, 2020.