Red is another action-packed movie with a combination of humor and predictability. We all know that there are lots of action movies this year, but this one is simply unique though not original. IGN tells more of it:
Based on the graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer, the story treads a well-worn path. Bruce Willis plays Frank Moses, a former CIA operative struggling to come to terms with retirement.
Spending his days growing avocados and flirting with the woman who writes his pension cheques, Frank misses the good old days. Which is a good thing as early on in proceedings a team of high-tech assassins attempt to take him out, with disastrous results.
Suddenly on the run and seemingly at the centre of a high-level government conspiracy, Frank picks up his pension lady and then sets about unravelling the mystery and re-assembling his former Black Ops team, all of whom are in similar danger.
The story is an unoriginal one, with shades of multiple movies released in the last 18 months, including The Expendables Watchmen, The Losers, Salt and The A-Team.
What makes Red work however is the quality of the cast and the standard of the gags. Willis is typically cool in the lead, believable as a cold-blooded killer while at the same time smart and self-effacing. It’s the kind of role the Die Hard star can perform in his sleep, but that doesn’t make his work in the movie any less enjoyable.
That said, his assassin squad are the real stars of the show – Helen Mirren hilarious as a lethal weapons expert, Morgan Freeman heartbreaking as a killer with terminal cancer, and John Malkovich quite frankly bonkers as a former operative whose brain has melted thanks to daily doses of LSD. It’s not often that Malkovich gets to flex his comedy muscles, but here he steals every scene in which he appears.
The team is ably supported by a fantastic cast that includes Richard Dreyfuss, Mary-Louise Parker, Karl Urban, Brian Cox and even Ernest Borgnine, delivering a brief-yet-touching performance as the Agency’s ultimate keeper of secrets.
And while the story is far from original, the jokes come thick and fast, including a stand-out gag about Willis’s lack of hair, and a marvellous epilogue that has to be seen to be believed.
The action is similarly impressive, no-more-so than when Mirren gets to let rip with a rocket launcher, while a super-violent, super-funny scene at an airport is one of the stand-out sequences of the year.
Director Robert Schwentke – best known for the ridiculous Flightplan and the tedious Time Traveler’s Wife – does his best work on this movie, quickly finding a playful tone, maintaining momentum as he mixes action with comedy, and shooting the likes of Washington, Chicago, New York and Alabama with real visual flair.
The result hardly re-invents the wheel, but doe provide consistent laughs throughout. The cast are clearly having the time of their lives as they spark off each other, and that sense of fun fills every frame of film.
So while Red brings little new to the party, it does what it does very well, putting an enjoyable spin on an oft-told story, and entertaining for every one of its 113 minutes.
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