RED
Based on the graphic novel by Warren Ellis, “RED” is the movie “The Expendables” SHOULD have been: fast, funny, and kind of awesome. Fortunately, where Sylvester Stallone went for a more hard-core action movie with aging stars like himself, Ellis’s vision (by way of “Flightplan” director Robert Schwentke, of all people) keeps things light and kind of silly. Of course, that’s easier to do with Bruce Willis in a starring role instead of Stallone.
Willis stars as Frank Moses, a retired CIA Black Ops specialist, who’s trying to settle into an everyday “normal” life (in Cleveland, OH of all places). He’s living off a pension check from the government, but he’s been tearing them up, giving him an excuse to call the Federal office and talk with Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker), a woman with whom he’s become quite smitten. Likewise for her, as she plays along with him. When he says he’ll be in Kansas City soon, they decide to try and meet in person. But the circumstances change up a bit when a hit squad, seemingly sent by the Feds, comes to kill him. Now he’s got a dogged agent (William Cooper, played by Karl Urban in a terrific follow-up to his breakthrough in “Star Trek”) after him, and he has to get his old crew together in order to figure out why. And when he gets Sarah involved, well, let’s just say it’s a first date to remember.
The screenwriters, Jon and Erich Hoeber, keep the tone wry and wickedly funny (ditto Christophe Beck’s sly score), especially when Frank and Sarah have to search out Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman, who just gets better and more rascally with age), Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich in his best and most frenzied performance since “In the Line of Fire”), and Victoria (Helen Mirren, who honestly makes an aging secret agent look, well, sexy) to help uncover this conspiracy.
It’s a twisted one, but in the end, so is this movie. That’s part of why it’s so much fun. It tweaks so many conventions that you can’t help but smile as it does so. True, Willis is in his usual snarky and smart self, but where he really hits his stride in this film is in the relationship with Sarah. She isn’t your average action movie squeeze. She’s a bit quirky, and after being initially frightened by the predicament she’s in, she’s kind of excited about the possibilities. Parker (right now a television darling thanks to “Weeds”) hits all the right notes as the kind of woman who will turn a man’s life upside down, who will inspire us to risk life and death, with whom we want to ride off into the sunset with…or, you know, Russia. It depends on what you want out of life.
(By the way, the title means “Retired, Extremely Dangerous.” Hopefully none of these guys will retire for a long time…)
