Red [Blu-ray]

Red is a very silly but very enjoyable action comedy. A great cast, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Mary Louise Parker, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Karl Urban and Ernest Borgnine all giving excellent performances, with Bruce Willis and John Malkovich being the standouts. Hard to picture Bruce Willis retired but he plays it well, and yes i suppose he is getting near retirement age now. Don't take any of this film seriously and you should enjoy it as it is a lot of fun to watch and there are good action scenes too.

The fact that 'Red' is meant to be a bit silly makes it a lot of fun. Take it's origin - graphic novel. And its topic, about a bunch of retired agents getting thrown back into action when they're tagged for termination, is the kind of daft 'high concept' they used to do in the '90s.
Luckily it's well made. When it's played for laughs, the tone is bang on perfect. Helen Mirren's scenes as the charming ex assassin are fantastic, and come with great comedy timing, especially the scene where she racks back the bolt on an assault rifle while informing the girly 'Sarah' that she thought it would be nice for them to spend "a little girl time together".
Bruce Willis is perfect as retired CIA agent Frank - still very slick at the action stuff to the point of looking convincing as he trades slugs with Karl Urban, and yet somehow able to playfully flirt with Mary Louise Parker's much younger 'Sarah' without it feeling particularly creepy.
Parker is great fun, throwing herself into the role of the semi-kidnapped call centre employee with vim and enthusiasm, while Freeman and Malkovitch are great throughout. Karl Urban manages to make his nominal bad guy a far more rounded character than expected as well.
The direction is fast and very good, and the dialogue is often funny, while some of the scenes manage to successfully mix comedy and action in equal measures, which is often much harder than it sounds.
As a story this is very enjoyable with some interesting locations and excellent ideas. The effects are good as well, and pack some great explosions.
It even has a comedy pig (you'll see what I mean). A lot of fun.

Based on a relatively obscure miniseries by DC Comics, RED tells the story of a group of retired CIA agents considered to be code RED, which means Retired: Extremely Dangerous. Having moved on from their exciting lives, the former spies have settled into more mundane existences until a conspiracy from their past threatens to drag them back into the world of espionage and danger.

Bruce Willis stars as the lead character, Frank Moses, and spends most of the film perfecting that half-smile stare that he seems to use for his more recent action movies. It evokes a sense of 'too cool for school' and almost belies a sense of boredom of having to star in yet another action hero role. He doesn't seem to stretch himself too much in the role and aside from a few witty one-liners, he actually seems very distant from the film - almost as if nothing happening on-screen fazes him.

His co-stars, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich seem to be more invested in the film, although with the exception of John Malkovich, none of them seem overly exerting themselves in playing their characters. Malkovich's turn as the paranoid, eccentric former-spy, Marvin, was a highlight of the film and brought an added sense of fun to the surprisingly light-hearted thriller.

I also enjoyed Karl Urban's role as the main antagonist and look forward to seeing him appear in more films in the future. The sequence with him and Bruce Willis having an extended fight scene was effectively brutal and showcased both actors very well, although i'd imagine most of the violent scenes were done by stunt-men rather than the actors themselves. The female lead, Mary-Louise Parker, was also quite enjoyable as the bewildered civilian who is dragged into the conspiracy of these aged-CIA agents and those trying to kill them. I didn't think there wasn't that much chemistry between her and Willis though, which made you wonder why she continued to follow him into dangerous circumstances again and again.

The film itself seemed to plod along with a fairly standard plot, which seemed to service merely as a device to get them to visit a myraid of American states, complete with a rather nice postcard themed animation sequence for each new location they visit. The set-pieces are more livelier than the plot, especially the Ocean's Eleven-esque sequence towards the end when the gang attempt to kidnap a high-value target from underneath the government's nose, putting their skills as secret agents to the test.

I quite liked the idea of an "aged A-Team", as it were, but I don't think there was enough charm to this movie and some of the potential of having retired CIA agents was lost. I think a far more interesting opportunity would have been to have cast older action stars against the younger generation and play on the casting a bit more, similar to how Sylvester Stallone cast his actors for The Expendables, which shares a similar theme of aged mercernaries struggling against the modern world, but it plays upon the stereotypical action movie tropes a lot more than RED does.