I saw RED (Retired,ExtremelyDangerous, not the color) today, with Bruce Willis leading as a retired CIA operative who’s been targeted for assassination.
It’s seriously predictable and way over the top. As long as you can go with that and can suspend belief for a couple of hours, I have to say that it’s really not bad. It’s certainly appears to have been superior to the crop of similar movies (Knight and Day, The Killers, The Expendables…) from this past summer. But still, the less said about the plot, the better. The reason to see it (if see it you do) is for the cast.
I’m not ordinarily a Bruce Willis fan, but I did like him in this. I was less taken with Mary-Louise Parker’s Sarah: she threw herself into the spirit of things a little too easily, but that seems to be a hallmark of movies of this kind. I came out of the movie wishing that they had cast for the role someone closer to Willis’s age.
As for Morgan Freeman, I’d like to see him (and Michael Caine, too, as far as that goes) get out of this sidekick rut he’s in. And I’d like to see John Malkovich play sane every once in a while. Is that too much to ask? I wasn’t way keen on Brian Cox, and I have serious doubts about the plausibility of his character’s involvement in the activities of the film.
The other roles were nicely cast and well played. I enjoyed both Helen Mirren and Karl Urban in this, and generally, it looked as though everyone involved had had a great time making the movie.
As guilty pleasures go, this gets four stars (out of a possible five).
P.S. Anyone else have a "Oh my God, he‘s still alive"? moment when Ernest Borgnine came on screen?
