Oldies are the best in action comedy

With a stellar cast that any movie could be proud of, I was expecting a lot of light-hearted action flick Red – and I wasn’t disappointed.

Bruce Willis is veteran black-ops agent Frank Moses, whose top secret file is stamped RED: Retired, Extremely Dangerous.

Since hanging up his holster Moses spends his days kicking his heels, pottering about the house, and looking for another excuse to call Sarah (Mary Louise Parker), the chatty, bored bureaucrat responsible for his pension cheques.

But his newly found quiet life comes quickly crashing down when a wet team is sent in to kill him.

Needless to say that Moses dispatches with his would-be assassins with ease and an impressive array of weapons that any American would be proud of.

Convinced they will be heading for would-be love interest Sarah next, Moses does just what you would expect – kidnaps her.

And so it is that Moses and Sarah take to the road to try and discover why there is a price on his head.

Along the way Moses calls on a number of old pals and colleagues who are also finding retirement a little bit hard to handle.

Joe (Morgan Freeman) spends his days ogling nurses in his care home, Marvin (John Malkovich) is paranoid from years of taking LSD and lives in a bunker, and Victoria (Helen Mirren) who is still a contract killer on the side.

They used to be the CIAs top agents but quickly discover that the secrets they know just made them the Agency’s top targets.

Now framed for assassination, they must use all of their collective cunning, experience and teamwork to stay one step ahead of their deadly pursuers and the ambitious eyes of CIA Agent William Cooper (Karl Urban), to stay alive.

To stop the operation, the team embarks on an impossible, cross-country mission to break into the top-secret CIA headquarters, where they uncover one of the biggest conspiracies and cover-ups in Government history.

One criticism is that it takes director Robert Schwentke too long to get all of the team back together.

Red is a road movie where each stop introduces us to a character and then we have a plot point or action scene, but the momentum doesn’t always carry from scene-to-scene.

But what the direction lacks, the fantastic cast more than makes up for. And once the assemble is formed, it is great to watch.

John Malkovich totally steals the show as the crazy Marvin, but that is to be expected from such a class act. And playing the film’s most colourful character, he still manages not to overplay it.

And despite his 55-years, Willis is more than believable in this latest tough guy role.

Though I must admit to finding the touchy feely scenes between him and Parker a little bit too cheesy – I even had to look away at one point.

Helen Mirren looks decidedly bad ass and utterly convincing at the helm of a sniper riffle – a lady you would not want to mess with.

And Morgan Freeman is great as ever, though his character is much more of an afterthought and could have done with more screen time.

It is also great to see an older cast act their age, yet not conform to typical Hollywood approaches to life over 50.

Red is everything that The Expendables wanted to be, but failed to achieve.

by Claire O’Neill.

star rating HHHH

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