RED! IT MAKES DIE HARD SEEM LIKE Shakespeare

Rating: 2/10 (2 November 2010)

I must have missed the point, because I thought this was the daftest film I have seen for some time. I want more for my money than good actors slumming their way through a farcical plot.
The ludicrous tone is set right at the start. Our hero Frank Moses (Willis) is living in a very ordinary suburban house in a very ordinary suburban street. The CIA send a hit squad to kill him in the middle of the night but, being Bruce Willis, he disposes of them without turning a hair (he hasn't got any hair, actually). Seeing that things aren't going very well, the spooks send in twenty or so heavily armed men who advance on the house, pouring thousands of rounds of sub-machine gun rounds into it. This utterly destroys the house, which appears to be made of plywood, but of course Brucie is well away by that time.
The joke is that all this mayhem occurs without ANY of the neighbours so much as looking out of the window, let alone running around in panic. Just another night in the burbs, presumably.
Later on there is a scene in which Frank Moses empties an automatic pistol into a car, causing its driver no little concern. This happens in a busy street, but again nobody takes any notice.
The CIA man out to get Frank is an odd character, too. He is a cold-blooded killer (the first time we see him he gets what he wants from a captive with a rope around his neck, then he kicks the stool away and watches him die: charming feller). However,he goes home at night to his lovely wife and adorable children. Had a good day at the office, dear? I seem to recall that Arnold Schwarzeneggar, in True Lies, was also a family man. That was a daft film as well.
The other characters are pretty much unbelievable. Morgan Freeman is OK but under-used, and John Malkovich and Helen Mirren are over-used. Malkovich seems to be trying to play Donald Sutherland's character Oddball from Kelly's Heroes, but comes over as unhinged rather than wry and canny. Mirren is part-Mother Superior and part-Xena, Warrior Princess, and she has the enviable ability to take a bullet through the guts and show no ill-effects afterwards.
All in all a disappointing outing. I could have stayed at home and cut my toenails.