RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous) is the new movie adapted from Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner’s comic of the same title. I went and saw this movie this weekend, and I have to say it was probably one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Granted this year has pretty much sucked for movies, excluding Iron Man 2 and MacGruber (Don’t judge me). The cast alone makes this movie worth the $11.50 I paid, it stars Bruce Willis as Frank Moses a retired CIA Black Ops agent who has been leading a very quiet life. The only thing the guy’s got going in his life is calling this girl, Sarah (Mary-Louis Parker) who works as a phone operator for the company in charge of sending out Frank’s pension checks. He keeps claiming that he’s not getting his checks just so he can talk to her (You’d think Bruce Willis would have an easier time meeting women).
Then a team of high-tech black ops soldiers breaks into his house to kill him one night, but hey it’s Bruce Willis and he’s able to take out about thirty guys on his own. Afterwords Frank tracks down Sarah and kidnaps her to make sure these guys don’t try to kill her as well. Sarah is then brought into Frank’s world of espionage and ass-kickery as he tracks down his old friends who also happen to be retired agents to help him figure out why he’s on a list with about a dozen other people who are already dead.
His teammates include, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, and John Malkovich. These guys work really well together and they are all believable in their roles. I normally don’t care for John Malkovich, I don’t hate the guy I just never really understood why people liked him so much. Now I get it, the guy was really funny in this movie and he did a really good job in that role. Helen Mirren and Brian Cox were great together in this movie, both were really funny and she especially was great at pulling off a role of an older woman who was better with a gun than any of the other guys. The only disappointment was Morgan Freeman, not that he did a bad job, I just thought they could have utilized his character better. He didn’t seem to get enough of an opportunity to showcase his talents in an Action/Comedy. If that wasn’t enough we also get a couple other veteran actors including Richard Dreyfuss and Ernest Borgnine. I’m a huge fan of these two guys and seeing them in this movie was an awesome surprise. Neither of them have huge roles in the movie, but both their roles are pivotal to the storyline.
Having not read the comic I can’t say if it does justice to the source material, but as a moviegoer I can say this was a solid movie. I love mysteries and at its core this movie is a mystery story. The action is great, and the comedy is mixed in really well. The most important thing about a movie is its ability to hold the audience’s attention and the only time I was bored during this movie was during the opening previews. This movie may not be Citizen Kane, but if you’re looking for a fun movie you could see to escape for a couple hours I would recommend this one. After all it’s got the most important thing an action movie needs, Bruce Willis hurting people.
Ken Zeider
Ken@ComicImpact.com