Better off red

Red centres around a retired CIA agent who discovers he is on a CIA-sanctioned hit list.

I’ve never been a Bruce Willis fan, but even I have to say he seems to have ripened with age. In his latest flick, Red, he isn’t as annoyingly brooding as he usually is, and even manages to pull off comedy pretty well.

That said, he has some help in the form of a fairly straight forward plot and a stellar cast. Red centres around a retired CIA agent named Frank, played by Willis, who discovers he is on a CIA-sanctioned hit list because he once had links to a shady black ops mission in Guatemala. Frank hasn’t quite come to terms with his quiet suburban life as a retiree — he keeps a hidden cache of weapons in his basement, which comes in handy when the government tries to hunt him down. After a brief gun battle, Frank travels around the country (with a prospective girlfriend in tow) rounding up his buddies, who also happen to be retired CIA agents, and tries to convince them to take on the CIA with him.

His three buddies Joe, Marvin and Victoria are played by Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren. These veteran actors fill out the movie beautifully, and it’s refreshing to watch them breathe new life into potentially stale, conventional characters. Malkovich and Mirren shine particularly brightly — Malkovich convincingly portrays all the quirks a paranoid former spy ought to display, and Mirren dazzles as a fabulously daring old minx who can’t be tamed.

The only let-downs in the movie are Mary-Louise Parker and Karl Urban, who play Frank’s love interest Sarah and his nemesis, William, respectively. For some unconvincing reason, Sarah must be taken along for the ride when Frank decides to go rogue. Parker spends most of her time onscreen moaning or getting underfoot while the former agents launch various attacks on government installations. Urban, unfortunately, has only one face — his ‘bad guy’ face, which he wears unsuccessfully for the entire movie. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t suffer too much because of these actors since Willis, Freeman, Malkovich and Mirren are the main attractions anyway.

Red is, of course, a comedic action movie. Director Robert Schwentke is savvy enough to keep the viewer’s focus on the thrills, with only occasional but extremely funny diversions allowed for character development. This is not to say that the movie lacks a message — Red does stress the importance of friendship, the value of experience, and the inherent wisdom of never letting your guard down. But these feel-good moments of insight don’t overwhelm the movie, allowing the viewer to keep pace with the action and ultimately, the movie is successful because it sticks to the script and doesn’t try to be something its not — the result is a funny, wholesome, good old-fashioned action movie that you don’t want to miss.

Published in The Express tribune, December 12^th, 2010.