Primary color, secondary Sara Palinesque fun

Rating: 6/10 (16 January 2011)

It is hardly surprising that Hollywood would manufacture an obvious fantasy version of the plot of a venial Vice president (or right wingers behind him) ready to have countless people murdered in their quest for power as a vehicle for a group of mature actors to have a fling at an over the top action film.
Eight years of Dick Cheney and his minions (and the still current irresponsible gun slinging pronouncements of a later candidate for the office) made the story all too believable. Few seriously made such charges against Cheney openly, but right wingers practically made a cottage industry out of manufacturing fictions they asked to be taken seriously along those lines about their opponents in office for years (the truly venial always think they see the rest of the world when they look in a mirror).
Of course Hollywood had been here before with the masterpiece assassin film THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and lesser films like THE PARALLAX VIEW, but RED (a "humerus" acronym for Retired, Extremely Dangerous) departs from the best story telling (and reality) by seeming to launch, under extreme provocation (the first half of the film where Bruce Willis, fleeing over-the-top attempts on his life assembles his team of also targeted retired "spooks"), an an attempted assassination on a right wing politician (in the real world usually only moderates and liberals seem to get shot - but fictional reversal of the political poles seems almost traditional: look at how Alan Drury reversed the behaviors of his "liberal" and "conservative" politicians in his ADVISE AND CONSENT and its sequels). The film tries its best not to name the party or the positions of the venial V.P. in question (more an evil Dan Quayle type than a Dick Cheney look-alike) who may have initiated the string of murders, but the visual hints and the people behind him are unmistakable, and since RED is at its heart a comedy of violence, you don't need to worry too much about the politician - although anyone around him is likely to share the fate of minor supporting players on "away missions" on Star Trek.
The cast is 90% of the real fun - from Bruce Willis retreading familiar territory to Morgan Freeman's usual noble support and Helen Mirren's elegance adding "pistol packing mama" and unexpected comedienne to her resume. Mary-Louise Parker's tag-along phone-in-girlfriend to Willis (kidnapped when he believes her also targeted) comes across as pretty much of an afterthought for plot purposes, but new screenwriter Jon Hoeber (his only major previous credit was the gimmick murder mystery set in Antarctica, WHITEOUT) gives her just enough comic lines to never let her seem like a drag on the story.
We don't expect much more than serviceable direction from Robert Schwentke, whose most original work was on THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, trying to expand again on ideas TV had gotten to first (he showed far more subtlety in the 2009 TV Pilot for LIE TO ME), and we don't get it, but he keeps the traffic moving and the explosions popping with (apparently) fewer actors injured than in the previews of the Broadway musical version of SPIDER-MAN, despite the higher body-count blithely depicted here.
The ballet of violence played for laughs IS fun if you suspend your disbelief and moral sense - which is the only way to watch this wild exercise in star exploitation. The team assembled and the resolution achieved is so elegant in a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE fashion, one suspects the film makers thought they had a "caper film" franchise in the making ala OCEAN'S ELEVEN, and they may have, but judging from the scene just before "the crawl" of credits at the end they apparently realized they could go this way but once while the stars are fresh. Too many TV shows are mining the territory weekly for free.
Still, the film is undeniable fun and the mission not quite impossible...just not for the impressionable.