It may be the second DC title about covert agents striking back at the people who tried to kill them, but Red easily surpasses The Losers in all the right ways; substituting strong acting and writing for the flashy stylized look of the latter, Red tells a similar story but with characters that don’t feel like a collection of spy or gun-for-hire clichés. The veteran cast of Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, and Helen Mirren work brilliantly with one another, making you wonder if Director Robert Schwentke deserves credit for any or all of it. Each plays to their own pre-established strengths as actors, and the film gets a vibrant kick from it. No other facet of the film quite reaches the heights the cast adds, as only a few of the action beats are really fulfilling with the rest feeling a bit too slow. And while being at the center of an action flick may be a new direction for Malkovich and Mirren, they never feel out of place as they let their own recognizable styles inform the characters with Willis’ well-known action persona driving the film forward (though he's consistently outshone by the other key players). All the pieces come together to make Red a respectable action-comedy.
Frank Moses (Willis) retired from his life of covert ops years ago, but he still hasn’t completely settled into life as a typical American citizen. Quaint customs like decorating the yard for Christmas, and even casual interaction with other people, don’t sit well with Frank’s hardened composure. Just as Frank is starting to get somewhere with what looks to be his only romantic, or even social, connection, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), the woman who handles his pension checks and takes his daily phone calls in Kansas City, a team of assassins attempts to kill him by pouring down a torrent of bullets tearing his house to tatters. Someone wants Frank dead. He doesn’t know why, but he knows that if they tried to kill him, they must have been tapping his phones and so Sarah must be in danger as well. He steals off to her apartment in Kansas City, abducts her, and thus begins their cross-country roadtrip to get to the bottom of the conspiracy that has Frank and Sarah targeted for murder. As they make progress, Frank reunites with other former, aged agents including Joe (Freeman), the LSD-afflicted Marvin (Malkovich), and Victoria (Helen Mirren). Together they face off against a younger agent (Karl Urban) charged with taking down Frank no matter what the cost, and uncover a plot that reaches into the highest levels of government.
At its core, Red has a story that we’ve seen many times before: an agent fighting against those they once served to uncover corruption. The gimmick, and what ultimately makes Red worth watching, is the veteran cast taking on the mantle of what many studios would say is a young man’s game: being action stars. Granted Bruce Willis still lands action roles, and another Die Hard seems inevitable, but if the last Indiana Jones film ever made you doubt that a star in their 60s could kick ass and look convincing while doing so, Red provides the perfect counterpoint. Contrary to an eternally young James Bond, the aged characters of Red benefit from their implied ages. A single expositional sentence about Marvin being paranoid and experimented on with LSD by the government goes down a lot smoother when a nuanced actor like Malkovich can play the rest of the film as an unhinged lunatic as opposed to a younger actor who has to bounce back and forth between that persona and normalcy. Though it may sound ageist, the genuine benefit of older action-film protagonists is that it’s inevitable that mistakes were made at some point in their lives. When James Bond and a floozy “reconnect” randomly, there’s nothing to the experience because both are still young and it’s been maybe a week since the initial “connection”. With an older set of characters, love, loss, and regret are inherently written into dialogue. The writers and directors don’t have to spend so much time proving that their characters have lived full lives; it’s implied just by looking at the time-worn faces. And if that’s not enough, the CIA describes each of the main characters as “Retired. Extremely Dangerous.”
The conspiracy story is pretty see-through and at times the film thinks itself cleverer than it actually is, but the film’s greatest triumph is the talent assembled on the screen. In the end, they overcome some of the shortcomings in the script with talented performances that makes the entirety of Red a lot of fun to watch.
"Red" opens October 15, 2010 and is rated PG13. Action, Comedy. Directed by Robert Schwentke. Written by Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber (screenplay), Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer (graphic novel). Starring Brian Cox, Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Mary Louise Parker, Morgan Freeman.
