Red Reviews
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Its a funny, action packed, awesome car scene involving Bruce Willis movie!
John Malkovich was fantastic as the paranoid nut job and was just hilarious i could watch this movie over and over!
A brilliant cast making this a brilliant movie! Loved It.
Super Reviewer
I love the theme of "old folks doin' stuff." Silly and sophomoric just works better with geriatric actors. Willis hardly qualifies as that, but don't question it. He represents action and humor, with Mirren and even Ernest Borgnine surprisingly adept at both too. More comedy than death-defying adventure, you'll want to (like Mary-Louise Parker) trade your mundane life for the action and thrills of a CIA hit man. Retired Extremely Dangerous is right.
I can't stop laughing at Malkovich and his pig.
Super Reviewer
Maybe it's the incredibly wonderful cast/characters or the offbeat humor, but it works! Besides, it's really hard to hate on a film that doesn't even want to be taken seriously with all the necessary leisurely ingredients.
It's smart, fun, exciting, stylish and hilarious. The qualities that any shallow action film should try to embody, a thoroughly great experience.
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
You are served up a script that could serve as yet another Bourne/ Mission Impossible, rogue agent on the loose scenario. The twist here is that the story line involves a bunch of sexagenarians, which allows Morgan Freeman to utter the hilarious line "looks like we're getting the band back together".
If nothing else, you get to watch some truly heavyweight talent have some fun - kind of like the Ocean's 11 reboot... all that star power, and you could tell that the cast is having a blast. And what a cast: Bruce Willis, the aforementioned Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Miren, Mary Louise Parker, Brian Cox (who uses a thick Russian accent throughout), and Richard Dreyfuss (who looks like he's having the most fun of all - playing a bad guy and actually saying "hey, look at me, I'm a bad guy").
Helen Miren is perfectly cast as a "wet agent". When non-spy Parker asks what a wet agent is, she drolly informs her "I kill people, dear". Precious!
Oddly enough, the script and storyline are fairly tight, as if you could have played this one seriously if you desired - thank goodness that they didn't - it's much more entertaining with tongue in cheek - yet this neo parody manages to steer clear of the knuckleheaded, dumbed down splatter gun "let's look for laughs" method that seems to hit the theater every five minutes nowadays. It's almost as if this was written as a kind of homage to the serious action thriller - even while poking fun at the genre.
I loved the funk soundtrack, especially the inclusion of the uber bad "Sissy Strut", as well as the postcard gimmick that adds to the first half of the film.
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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Super Reviewer
Moving aside from the frontrunners underlies the real breakout star of the film: Mary Louise Parker. She absolutely kills when delivering her lines, intending for comic effect. ("I was hoping you had hair" she says to Bruce Willis' character with the perfect amount of disdain) Helen Mirren also produces the main effect, with her usually violent zingers spurring out as fast her bullets. ("I've never seen him this happy. (Tone Changes) If you break his heart, I will kill you. And bury your body in the woods.")
Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman weren't as funny as I'd hoped for them to be in this movie.(Of course to be fair, the script doesn't really give them much to work with after dishing out zingers between the rest of the cast.) So, this leaves the weight of the male cast to be carried out by Brian Cox and John Malkovich. John Malkovich has his own moments, (He looks exactly like Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future!) which usually involve government brain washing plots, stuffed pigs carrying machine guns, and being suspicious towards everyone, including himself. (Malkovich: Why are you trying to kill me? Willis: Why would I be trying to kill you? Malkovich: Because the last time we met I tried to kill you. Willis: That was a long time ago. Malkovich: Some people hold onto things like that.) Basically, The Expendables could take a note out of Red's book-Having an amazing ensemble cast is just stupid unless they actually do something cool! Because acting has a great impact on a movie- like 60% of it. (Which, coincidentally, is the amount of points needed for a fresh rating!)
An actor is nothing without a script. I was so happy when I saw that pretty much every joke in the movie was funny. When you try to make an action comedy, and the comedy fails, the movie flops. So, this was a very big gamble, but it was worth it. I notice that in big-name action movies like this or 'Salt', it's the actor that only gets recognized. That's because the directors are not giving themselves enough credit. I guess it's a good thing that I didn't know Robert Schwentke was directing, (The Time Traveler's Wife, Flightplan) or else I would have waved it off. However, he doesn't try to go out of his way here, (thank goodness!) so it's overall OK. It was, however, pretty cool when he put in some action effects (When the car is making a turn on the road, and Willis just flips open the door, walks out, shoots, and gets back in, all in Slow-mo, or when Malkovich is getting shot with a torpedo, he nails it with a small copper .40)
Other movies on my list with Red were the Other Guys and Knight and Day. I liked it better than both. It is more similar (a lot) to Knight and Day, but I found everything here to run a lot more smooth and satisfying than it. I liked it better than the Other Guys, because at time, I had to cringe at its graphicness and groan at its stale jokes. I'd definitely put all of those movies on a list of recommended action-comedies, but overall, Red was better.
It is comparable to great movies such as Casino Royale and The Bourne Identity, but doesn't yet reach that mark. I am hoping immensely for a sequel to happen, because there are some points that it can draw from. Its plot and story are surprisingly complex for this genre, but it seems that they intelligently made a plot first, than fit in the jokes later. THAT is how an action-comedy should be made.
Synopsis: Retired black-ops agent Frank Morris is RED. Retired and extremely dangerous. He's sitting at home, tearing up checks, an excuse to call a representative he's interested in at the insurance agency. A large group of assassins attempts to kill him, and so he's on the run. He goes to visit Sarah (the representative), like he planned, but has to hide her because the people who are trying to kill him are after her to-he made over 20 phone calls to her in the last month.
He and Sarah discover a list of names of people who were killed because they were involved in a scandal they weren't supposed to know about. They enlist the help of fellow REDs Victoria, Joe, and Marvin to get the badees and save the remaining people on the list.
Super Reviewer
Stick some old timers together in an unusual situation, sit back and let the cinematic gold flow over you. Right? Well, not always. Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson teaming up for The Bucket List yielded only lukewarm results. The same is true of Space Cowboys - and let's not even start with the Wild Dogs/Old Dogs combo.
The action is explosive, certainly, and there is enough to satisfy requirements. But, perhaps more so than any other film based on a graphic novel, Red relies on the script and the chemistry of its leads rather than gratuitous special effects and over-the-top CGI.
In the terms of chemistry, Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Freeman and John Malkovich share a relaxed rapport and make for easy company. They are/were, despite their age, all killers-for-hire, and yet it's very difficult not to like any of them, particularly Malkovich's completely insane Marvin Boggs (his fondness for a pink toy pig, and rampant paranoia, are both highlights). And Mirren going whammo with the amoo!
Red is little like the seniors' answer to Ocean's Eleven.
Super Reviewer
I didn't see or read anything about it beforehand, which is why it surprised me in a pleasant way.
This usually isn't my cup of tea, but with this cast and some very hot action scenes, you won't be bored.
