Dvd
Red
Action-comedy about ex-CIA agents who ditch their quiet, retired lives and get back in the game. Stellar cast includes Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman and Kiwi Karl Urban.
Willis is Frank, who despite being out the game for some time, finds himself the target of a high-tech assassin. With his life, identity and lady friend (Mary-Louise Parker) in danger, Frank reassembles his old team in a last ditch effort to survive.
Based on a three part comic book mini-series by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner.
Starring Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, Karl Urban, Richard Dreyfuss, Brian Cox
Directed by Robert Schwentke ('The Time Traveler's Wife')
Written by Erich Hoeber, Jon Hoeber (based on the comics by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner)
Comedy, Adaptation, Action | 1hr 51mins | Rated (M) | Contains Violence & Offensive Language | Origin: USA | NZ Distributor: Hoyts Distribution | Official Site »
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Flicks review
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2
With a cast to die for, who wouldn't expect big things from Red (Retired Extremely Dangerous)? Watching Dame Helen Mirren fire a bazooka while maintaining her queenly disposition is worth paying the admission fee, and Kiwi star Karl Urban is suitably stony as Bruce Willis' nemesis.
But this comedy-action flick has little else going for it than its red-hot leads. The film tries a bit too hard to be irreverent as it sends some of Hollywood's elder statesmen and women into the firing line, with scant regard for story. Usually that doesn't matter too much in a film that blows up half of its props but, here, it feels like a long-winded excuse for a back-patting exercise. The film's two romances are implausible, the dialogue is drawn out with geriatric pauses and the constant funk soundtrack does little to make sense of a plot more disjointed than Brian Cox's knees.
Even the characters know the stakes just ain't that high. They've done their dash as CIA agents, which means they have nothing to lose but it also means no-one cares if Morgan Freeman walks out alive.
Red is not without its charms – John Malkovich's turn as the too-quirky-not-to-have-been-wiped-out-by-now victim of extreme paranoia is endearingly mad, and Mary-Louise Parker seems still to be on Weeds – but it seems to think it's funnier than it really is.
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The people's reviews
9 reviews
Press Reviews
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Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert)
Red is neither a good movie nor a bad one. It features actors we like doing things we wish were more interesting.
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Christchurch Press (Margaret Agnew)
3
Sometimes the delight you take in a movie isn't from the fact that it's particularly moving, or clever, or even a great film.
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Empire (UK)
Good fun, and though it breathes hard in the second half, the ensemble has charisma to spare.
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Hollywood Reporter
Even the more cartoonish performances, like John Malkovich's acid-damaged paranoiac, fit the movie's vision of the vanished, wild-and-woolly heyday of spycraft.
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Los Angeles Times
Red can't stop itself from trying too hard to be hip. It's not that it doesn't have effective moments, it's that it doesn't have as many as it thinks it does. The film's inescapable air of glib self-satisfaction is not only largely unearned, it's downright irritating.
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New York Daily News
To underestimate actors of this caliber -- even in a popcorn action flick -- would be dangerous indeed.
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New York Times
It is possible to have a good time at RED, but it is not a very good movie.
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San Francisco Chronicle
This breezy action comedy is a noisy affirmation that life goes on after 50, that retirement doesn't mean redundancy, and that nobody - young or old - can wear a long cream evening gown like Mirren.
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Variety (USA)
Only a curmudgeon could entirely resist the laid-back charms of Red, an amusing, light-footed caper about a team of aging CIA veterans rudely forced out of retirement.
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