Features > Movie Reviews > Red…

There is, after all, a deep reservoir of respect accruing to the likes of John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Richard Dreyfuss, Brian Cox, and Morgan Freeman, and, it goes without saying, these guys (and doll) are such masters of the craft, it would be a pleasure watching them play just about anything.

Which is just as well, because this adaptation of a DC Comics’ book isn’t Shakespeare.

Willis is veteran black ops agent Frank Moses, whose top secret file is stamped RED: Retired, Extremely Dangerous.

You would think that even the government could see that Bruce (who is 55) still has a few bullets left in his chamber. Instead, he’s kicking his heels, puttering about the house, and looking for another excuse to call Sarah (Parker), the chatty, bored bureaucrat responsible for his pension checks. 

The opening is kind of lowkey and gently amusing, but the movie lost me almost immediately when director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan; The Time Traveler’s Wife) staged the descent of a CIA assassination squad on Frank’s home in a self-parodic, nudge-nudge, wink-wink fashion that said: Don’t take any of this seriously, it’s just a bit of fun.

Now, I don’t have anything against fun movies, but I do prefer that they take themselves seriously, in as much as, if someone is trying to kill the main character, I’d like him to feel the threat, maybe break a sweat, get angry, or somehow suggest that something is at stake here. Either that, or the jokes better kill.

Willis doesn’t do any of those things – he despatches at least a dozen agents without a second thought, and without ever looking remotely frazzled. And the jokes – with only a couple of exceptions – aren’t anything to write home about.

So what happens next? Moses supposes that Sarah must be in danger (why? Because he phones her so often…?) so he goes off and kidnaps her – for her own safety, naturally.

If the movie hadn’t already lost me, that leap of illogic would probably have clinched it – and not only because I’ve already seen this screwball dynamic in Knight and Day, Killers and The Bounty Hunter… In all these movies, the guys get to shoot people, while distressed damsels are bound and gagged, or foolishly try to escape from their self-appointed bodyguard. That is, until the penny drops, and then – if they’re lucky – they get to shoot people too. Not only is this set up sexist, it’s just, well, old. 

With his “girlfriend” in tow, Frank drops in on chums Morgan Freeman (in a resthome), Malkovich (a paranoid ex agent who lives in a swamp) and Mirren (who admits to an itchy trigger finger in her retirement), criss-crossing the country to unravel an uninteresting conspiracy involving the Vice President of the United States, a miscast Rebecca Pigeon, and an embarrassed looking Karl Urban – who seems to have realized too late he’s the only one in the cast under 40.

Parker’s quirky energy – “I was hoping you’d have hair…” she tells Willis – gives the comedy a welcome bump, and Malkovich’s nutjob is an easy sell, but the movie barely hangs together except as a kind of old troupers’ revue. Mind you, I did perk up when Ernest Borgnine appeared, in two too-brief scenes. I’ll admit, I thought he was dead – but no, he’s still grinning and gunning it, just like he did in The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch, Bad Day at Black Rock and so many other real movies. It made me see Red in a different, altogether more favourable light.