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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Red (2010)


This movie is chock full of overqualified actors who are featured in the graphic-novel-derived, comic action movie, including Bruce Willis, over-underacting as former black-ops CIA agent Frank Moses, John Malcovich, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren, all ex-CIA who have worked together in the past. The short version of this film is that it is very light weight, but true action comedies are rare, and this one does not make you wince.
So, here is the story. Retired Frank has been living a gratifyingly boring and solitary life in the burbs when his home is inexplicably invaded by a high-tech hit squad, which he methodically dispatches. Up until this point he's been periodically amusing himself flirting on the phone with Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), the administrator of his pension checks.
On the pretext of a business trip, he arranges a blind date with her. In the wake of the attack, fearing she may also be implicated, Frank converts the date into a kidnapping. Sarah complains, but not too convincingly. Frank, is, after all, more exciting than the losers she's been hooking up with.

Besides Frank, several other top CIA agents, all retired, are also being targeted by, as is soon revealed, their former employer. (The film's title is an acronym for "retired, extremely dangerous.") Joe (Morgan Freeman), terminally ill but still game, is living in a nursing home; Malkovich's Marvin, the unwitting recipient of long-ago LSD experiments conducted by the CIA, stows himself in a camouflaged bunker; Mirren's Victoria, looking like a cross between Martha Stewart and Margaret Thatcher, has a queenly decorum.
In order for it to work, one should not take 'Red' seriously on any level. Whenever it touches on the real world – whenever it brings up torture and terrorism and assassination of US leaders – it loses its bearings.

By not taking themselves too seriously, they provide an alternate-­universe romper room that harks back to the comfy days of cold warriorism. "RED," in fact, features a Russian operative and former cold-war spy, Brian Cox's Ivan, who's as warm and fuzzy as a teddy bear.

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