Dale's Video Backlog Blog: The Ref

December is finally upon us for this unbelievable year, so that means it is time for my yearly Christmas movie entry. Click here to catch up on several past Christmas movie blogs. Today I am covering a 1994 film I only recently discovered a couple years ago upon a recommendation from my longtime friend and fellow Risk-night competitor, Paul. That movie is The Ref (trailer), and it is more of a film that transpires on Christmas Eve, but has a few Christmas themes in it (kind of like Die Hard, but nowhere as minimal as a simple ‘Ho, ho, ho’ gag). It is not a traditional ‘spirt of Christmas’ film, and that is fine by me!

After a cheery Christmas-y opening credits montage of people out and about celebrating the night of Christmas, the film immediately cuts to troubled married couple Caroline (Judy Davis) and Lloyd (Kevin Spacey) in the middle of an intense marriage counseling session. Why the therapist was taking appointments on Christmas Eve is a bit of a headscratcher though. Regardless, it sets up Caroline and Lloyd’s future is not that bright. The Ref then pivots to veteran cat burglar, Gus (Dennis Leary) in a heist job that goes haywire and sets off alarms and has the town set in manhunt mode searching high and low for him. Gus naturally stumbles upon Caroline and Lloyd and takes them hostage in their home and seeks refuge there until he can find a way out of town.

Leary, Davis and Spacey have a golden chemistry with their dynamic throughout. Leary is phenomenal portraying Gus barely holding it together as his hostages are more focused on bickering at each other throughout the night than their own well-being. The night only gets more bizarre for the three when their son, Jesse (Robert J. Steinmiller Jr.) arrives home from military school for the holiday and how he is implemented into the mix. Things exponentially unravel from there when the rest of the extended family arrives late that night for Christmas Eve dinner and how Gus attempts to orchestrate an elaborate cover as the Christmas dinner goes awry in only the most entertaining way possible you just have to see to believe.

Seeing Gus try to maintain his cover and keep his hostages under control during the family dinner is a riot. The evening culminating with Gus, Caroline and Lloyd all matching each other with their own proper meltdown is acting gold by all three. I loved how the film wraps up with each of the core three characters all having gratifying conclusions.

The Ref is a brisk viewing clocking in at a little over an hour and a half, and if you are looking for a more unorthodox Christmas film that is packed with all the wrong kinds of laughs, then The Ref is the perfect film to mix into your holiday movie rotation. In physical format, it never received a BluRay release, and only received an early DVD release with no bonus features and does not upscale well to HDTVs, so you may be better off tracking down a digital rental to watch this instead.