Hugely enjoyable action adventure comedy

Rating: 8/10 (29 October 2010)

RED stands for Retired Extremely Dangerous. Retired CIA operative Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is so bored in retirement that he tears up his pension cheques just so that he has a reason to telephone pension clerk Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker). He is therefore a little put out when she reacts to his unheralded arrival in her apartment by screaming and objecting to a) being kidnapped and b) his lack of hair. To be fair, his reason for abducting her is because she is in danger from the same people who have destroyed his house while failing to assassinate him. What follows involves Moses recruiting fellow wrinklies Joe (Morgan Freeman), Marvin (John Malkovich) and Victoria (Helen Mirren) to find out what is going on, while Sarah (who, we already know, has a yearning for travel and adventure) gradually starts to enjoy the excitement.
This movie is a romp, and makes no pretense to be anything else. All the cast appear to be having the time of their lives, and Parker makes a much better fist of it as the everywoman sucked into action/adventure hi-jinks than Katherine Heigl and Cameron Diaz managed earlier in the year. Malkovich, in lowbrow mode, is very funny as someone who is excessively squirrelly due to having been force fed far too much LSD.
RED is based on a comic written by Warren Ellis and, like Ellis' comic work, it remembers that it is supposed to be fun. It isn't deep, it isn't important, but it flows fast, the action sequences are well staged, the cast are seasoned pros and they deliver, and it is often quite funny. I sat and watched it with a broad smile on my face most of the time.
My only quibble is that, while I'm not an expert on the geography of the USA, it seemed to me that people were travelling vast distances overland in very short periods of time without using air flight. But maybe I was missing something.