A hitman sent to kill Santa, on paper this idea sounds like something that could be so good. Especially if you've seen the Christmas episodes of American Dad which is exactly what I was thinking of with this movie. Sadly up until the last 20 minutes nothing happens, it's all pretty boring and the finale is pretty rubbish. I had high hopes but was left feeling like this movie had missed everything that should of been great.

I actually really enjoyed this. It’s dark, full action and puts an interesting twist on the whole merriment. I wouldn’t suggest watching this movie if it’s the typical Christmas magic you’re craving, but it is most definitely worth a watch!

As the many professional reviews I read afterwards suggest, *Fatman* is a movie that doesn't live up to it's promise. Fatman has a great premise about a gruffy slightly gritty Santa, a boy-child that feels wronged with his lump of coal and a Santa-obsessed hitman hired to kill him. I even think for the most part that tonally it mostly works. It's not overly gritty and it's not overly serious for most of it's runtime. It strikes that nice balance of casual surrealism. The problem is that the movie knows what it wants to tell you and doesn't have any patience or subtlety in getting there. All the dramatic tension you expected from the trailer when you hear Mel Gibson's Santa yelling to the hitman about "_You think you were the first to come for the Fatman?_" the movie doesn't actually have much Fatman hunting. There's no series of hide and seek where we see that Santa is capable of defending himself. Even the tension the movie decides to try to generate of the Hitman even trying to FIND Santa in the first place isn't really tension. It's just a road trip without all the fun aspects of a road-trip movie. No interesting stops, No interesting road people. The movie just walks a straight lines from Point A to Point B. Nothing you see even really matters. Santa goes by Chris in this movie. In this small down he knows everybody and everybody knows him. There is however no payoff for this. He saves a woman from going home with a married man by casually reminding him of his wife and kids but while we see her again and she's clearly a friend there's no payoff. It's like a failure of the Chekhov's Gun trope. There's a semi interesting plot line about Santa being underfunded and having to take a military contract to be able to pay his workers. In retrospect this entire plot line fails to have any narrative purpose other than world building Santa as a factory owner. In spite of their presence all over the final fight scenes these military security personnel plan next to no role in the violence. There's an even smaller plot line about Chris/Santa being grumpy because of his commercialized depictions compared to this underpaid status and while I like the characterization there it serves so little point to the plot that it feels kinda wasted. Wasted is unfortunately the only way to describe this whole movie. I went into this hoping for a darkly humorous film with a bit of violence and while a lot of the scenes sans context imply that, this is no Ladykillers (either one).

Time for a xmas movie but not a typical one. A killer on the road for Santa. Gibson is as always shining with the acting. You may expect CGI or extreme scenes when you hear that it is a xmas movie, but there is none. I am glad there is none. It is not the best movie ever but it is more than a timekiller. Enjoyable.

I enjoyed this movie.....oh is that wrong? was I not supposed to like this movie?