Director: Robert Schwentke
Starring: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, Richard Dreyfuss, Brian Cox, Ernest Borgnine
A great review by Matthew Kitsell for the film based on the comic book mini-series by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner.
Retirement from the CIA is never a straightforward business; no sooner have you moved into your new home in some small, picture-postcard American town than it is suddenly being razed to the ground in a hail of machine gun fire. Ex-CIA RED (Retired, extremely dangerous) agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) finds himself in just such a predicament and so immediately turns into a one-man army, effortlessly wiping out the unwelcome SWAT team responsible and going on the run. So begins Robert Schwentke’s wildly anarchic action-comedy, a wild ride that continually threatens to go spinning deliriously out of control, but somehow manages to keep it together for most of the journey.
Realising that his phone has been tapped, Moses kidnaps Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), a young woman he has been conducting long chats on the telephone with, for her own safety, and goes to hook up with some old pals – wise, ultra-smooth Joe (Morgan Freeman), frazzled, ultra-paranoid Marvin (John Malkovich) and elegant, ultra-deadly Victoria (Helen Mirren) – in order to find out why he is suddenly on a CIA hit list. At which point, the plot throws in a ruthlessly efficient CIA nemesis (Karl Urban), a lot of explosions and (just when you think things can’t get any more preposterous) Ernest Borgnine.
It looks worryingly near the start that Red might simply develop into a tedious exercise in cartoon-like violence and stylistic tics. Thankfully though, the charming romantic interplay between Willis and Mary-Louise Parker provides the picture with a heart that it might easily have lacked, which helps to keep this live-action comic strip breezing along in fine style. Added to this is the fact that the heavyweight cast seem to be having a great time indulging in some lightweight fun. It’s all going splendidly until the final third, when the sheer momentum of the piece starts to flag somewhat, and the whole thing carries on for a good twenty minutes longer than it needs to (though in fairness this tends to be a criticism that I have of most modern American pictures these days).
Much of Red plays out like a wired version of a Soderburgh movie (‘Out of sight’ springs to mind, especially in the early stages of the film dealing with the mutual distrust/growing attraction between Willis and Parker, echoing George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in that earlier film). The cool, pulsating grooves that largely dominate the musical score seem to be a direct lift from that whole genre. Pick of the performances is Willis himself, who pitches his performance perfectly between parody and sincerity, and his scenes with the very sweet Parker really crackle with romantic tension.
Not an important film, but a fun-filled ride nonetheless.
4/5.
