What a party!

Rating: Null/10 (10 November 2010)

This is what you may call an action comedy. The story is simple, revolving round a list of a handful (less than 10) retired (but Extremely Dangerous, hence "R.E.D.") CIA agents picked off one after another. The protagonist, one of the few remaining ones, escapes narrowly and ends up with a team of five (not all of them on the list) to get to the bottom of it. There's probably nothing that you have not seen, from standard action sequences, to acceptable plot line, to customary laughs and wisecracks. The real fun is all in the people, and they are obviously having a hell of a party.
Leading the cast is Brice Willis. While in a familiar role of an over-the-hill tough guy, his persona here is quite different from in many others you have seen before, which were world-weary, bitter, anti-social. Here, Frank Moses is stoic, conforming (put out Christmas decorations as soon as he sees his neighbours') and, while obviously bored, is doing something about it – trying to pick up a woman for a relationship, long-term too, so it seems.
John Malkovitch, as Marvin Boggs, steals the show with his neurotic CIA retiree who is always under the impression that everybody is trying to kill him and wants to kill everybody.and turns out to be right most of the time! He keeps asking Frank "Can I kill him/her now?" in exactly the same tone as a little boy asking his parents "can I eat this cake now"?
Helen Mirren plays the toughest of them all, Victoria (no last name), who specialized in killing people (designated CIA assassin) and finding life after retirement a little too quiet, takes odd assignments – "it's not easy to change your lifestyle", she explains. Mirren, I venture to guess, probably took a pay cut to make sure she got this role.
Veteran Brian Cox plays Ivan Simanov the Russian spy who once had a Romeo-Juliet type of love affair with Victoria. It warms the heart to see that rekindled but most importantly, of course, to see it played out between Mirren and Cox.
Morgan Freeman plays the oldest of the five, Joe Matheson, who also conveniently has terminal cancer. For plot line requirements of poignancy and heroism, someone needs to die. But then, Freeman's character get to die TWICE, and even if he has not been allotted with much screen time, Morgan is always a pleasure to watch.
If Freeman is old, how about Ernest Borgnine who, at 93, bring just as much joy and pleasure in his small role here as Eli Wallach (who is 2 years older!) in Wall Street: Money never sleeps.
Not old, but certainly an old-timer is Richard Dreyfuss who plays THE villain, with enough stage presence to spare. Another key role, a young and ambitious CIA agent who treads the thin line between good and bad guy, is admirably played by Karl Urban whom I'll always remember as Eomer in the LOTR Trilogy. Mary-Louise Parker, seen recently in family fantasy "The Spiderwick Chronicles" as a young, agonized mother, is the female lead in a Sandra Bullock type of role, parrying and flirting quite capably with Willis.