Fatman’s bizarro Christmas movie pitch is multifaceted in its oddness. Mel Gibson plays a weathered and worn right-wing version of Chris Cringle. Ole Santa slams brews at the local bar, shoots cans off barbed wire fences and uses his omniscience to scare a tempted husband off the scent of an inviting barmaid. You see, Santa is losing the faith as the parents of the world create fewer and fewer children deserving of Christmas presents and his government-contracted paycheck reflects this shortage of joy. Enter a rich, entitled mob boss of a 10-year old brat (Chance Hurstfield) who has tired of coal in his stocking and so hires a holiday-obsessed assassin (played by Walton Goggins) to claim the head of the Fatman as retribution.

A movie that attempts to mix sugar-addicted elves and military contract negotiations, Fatman struggles to rein in its tone. It’s a gun-totting family holiday movie unsuitable for families, that demands audiences accept Mel Gibson as a crusty Chris Cringle going through an existential crisis without really exploring what that looks like beyond bills pilling up. Viewers are asked to ready themselves for a hard-R Santa Claus movie only for the obscenity and violence to barely earn that R-rating. As the cat and mouse game of hunter and hunted finally comes to a head, the result is much too flat for a premise this ostensibly outlandish and you can feel the film stick in the chimney with a resigned sigh. When Fatman waddles its way to an action climax, the sequences by and large are second-rate; low budgets matched to low creativity. This is especially a shame considering that directors Eshom Nelms and Ian Nelms have previously displayed a true talent for riffing on genre expectations. Take for instance their spin on the Mexican standoff in Small Town Crime, a crusty neo-noir starring John Hawkes and Octavia Spencer that flew under the radar. For a movie that sets itself up for a confrontation between post-meltdown Gibson and an assassin spurned by years of coal in his stocking, the final showdown has little fireworks and even less vitriol to speak of. It’s just lame.

Both less bonkers and fun than it has any right to be, Fatman suffers from attempting to do too much and delivering too little. In addition to its general conceit of a world in moral decline, the script (also from the Nelms Brothers) attempts to skewer the military industrial complex, comment on corporate efficiency and jam in a B-story about a corrupt middle school science fair. Plot holes pile up, most notably how a child has an assassin in his Rolodex (something that goes entirely unexplained.)

The real saving grace comes in the admirably committed performances from Gibson and Goggins, neither of whom deliver anything near top-caliber work but remain devoted to the wonky material nonetheless. If only Fatman had pushed further, fulfilling its premise of a sardonic “fuck you” of a Christmas movie instead of just barely pushing buttons and then immediately backing down.

If the Nelms Brothers wanted to make a movie version of Fox News’ “War on Christmas” narrative, one easily digestible for the MAGA crowd, and complete with a strapped-up Santa banding up with the military, just make that movie. Make an offensive holiday bonanza with elves in suicide vests and a Santa Claus that drinks lib tears or whatever. Just don’t make a film that postures as antisocial and disruptive only to deliver something so lumpy, bland and spineless and act as if we’re not just getting coal.

CONCLUSION: ‘Fatman’ swings and misses attempting to spark cynical holiday joy. Just never going quite far enough, Mel Gibson’ Santa might drink and curse and shoot guns but the movie itself doesn’t a holiday present make.