Red is proof that you can't teach old dogs new tricks

Rating: 4/10 (6 November 2010)

Retired CIA agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) still has the moves. He survives an assassination in his own home from a group of heavily armed soldiers and takes to the road. He visits Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), a girl who writes his retirement cheques and has shared a relationship over the phone with him. When the assassins track them to her house, placing them both in danger, they reluctantly team up together. With various CIA operatives like rookie William Cooper (Karl Urban) out to kill him, Frank employs the help of his now retired team, who he suspects might be in danger too. They include Marvin (John Malkovich); a paranoid nutcase who has been subjected to too many LSD experiments; Joe (Morgan Freeman) who has liver cancer and the ageing Victoria (Helen Mirren) who is still able to wield an assault rifle. The team's investigation leads them to uncover the murder of a reporter, who was on the verge of revealing a high level conspiracy.
For anyone who is bored by gun fights, broken glass and baddies with bad aim, Red (Retired, Extremely Dangerous) will be of little relevance. Truthfully, director Robert Schwentke's comic book adaptation has no pretensions about what it is. It's an all up action film, with a more exaggerated and comical tone. The humour is meant to separate this film from the rest of its action counterparts, but the dialogue is rarely witty or black enough to provide consistent laughs. With the gimmick of seeing these mature actors firing off high powered weapons aside, the action also tires quickly because the situations lack imagination. There's the inevitable car chase, the home invasion ambush, the heavily guarded break-in and even an old favourite in the 'you go on without me' scene. Making the characters older does not increase the tension of these absurd and unlikely moments either. We know so little about them and the film is so disinterested in developing character that they become almost entirely expendable. Malkovich and Mirren seem to be having the most fun here but being class actors they are hardly challenged and should have known better. Willis looks bored, presumably because he has been playing this character his entire career. The juiciest one-liners from his best work in Die Hard are absent. Most disappointingly, Morgan Freeman has just a few scenes in a movie that is well under two hours. Why couldn't some of this star power be spread over to a memorable villain too? This is the second film of its kind this year, after Knight and Day, that has forgotten the value of a great baddie. For all of the talent on show, Red is proof that you can't teach old dogs new tricks.