If you look for neither the plausible nor the possible, you may have as much fun as I did.
Technically, RED as an action comedy. But the truth is that it's a king
size spoof rooted in next to nothing - and all the better for it. If you look
for neither the plausible nor the possible, you may have as much fun as I did.
Once the
Berlin Wall fell in a spectacular ending to the Cold War, spy writers had to
find other villains - often China, then the middle east. Surely we deserve a
moment of frivolity between extinction threatened first by Old Russia and now by
radicalized Jihadists on one hand and Chinese cyber warriors on the other.
Granted,
RED is violent frivolity - a comic strip of explosions and machine gun fire,
but it is silly stuff, fun to watch and born of a neat idea. Consider the
premise: RED stands for RETIRED, EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. After Bruce Willis
(Frank), retired CIA black ops specialist, is targeted in his home by a gang of
black ops wet invaders, he knows he must reassemble his old team of killers to
find out who is trying to do him in. There is a death list, you see, and all his
buddies are on it.
With a first
stop in Kansas City to kidnap Mary Louise Parker (Sarah) the woman whose voice
he has fallen in love with during a telephone flirtation over his retirement
checks, he searches for the others - all a neat excuse for the filmmakers to
parade elderly and beloved superstars across the screen in unaccustomed roles.
Willis finds
Morgan Freeman (Joe) in a New Orleans retirement home; former enemy Brian Cox
(Ivan) in dark seclusion, John Malkovich (Marvin) in a paranoid's dream house
accessible only through the trunk of a parked car, and at last, Helen Mirren at
her most grand, serving Christmas tea and flowers with an aside, "I take the odd
contract on the side." The running joke, of course, is that all of them miss the
business of killing and can't wait to get back to it.
Knowing who
is chasing them (CIA), they still must find out why. During a wacky
confrontation in Langley, we learn that the real villains are the CEO of a
weapons manufacturing company and the U.S. vice president/Dick Cheney. And did I
forget to mention 90 plus Ernest Borgnine as an archivist? Or that Mary Louise
Parker's Sarah is simply delighted to be kidnapped from her Kansas City boredom?
The main
show, however, is watching iconic actors generate comic chemistry. It's great
fun to watch experts at play. Who won't smile widely at Helen Mirren wrapped in
fur and wearing box boots while pumping a Tommy gun from a grove of trees, or
John Malkovich disguised as a pile of leaves? Perhaps best of all is the
metaphorical peace between Russia and the Allies as Mirren and Cox rekindle a
Cold War love. If you can't smile at this one, then I suggest humbly that you
need to chill.
Copyright (c) Illusion