Black Ops Comedy

Rating: 8/10 (3 November 2010)

Like Michael Corleone, Bruce Willis is out and they drag him back in, but this isn't business. Someone has got a black ops operation on some retired black ops operators. Enough to make anyone see Red.
It's quite a reunion Willis has as he starts looking around and sees that a lot of former colleagues are meeting sudden demises. He gets to a few of them like Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and John Malkovich and he even gets a Russian consultant in former KGB agent Brian Cox. When they're not reminiscing about old times, Cox does help point them in the right direction.
Red must have taken some inspiration from the two Over The Hill gang movies from the Sixties. Without the western setting and those colorful western character actors, Red gets quite a few laughs in mostly from John Malkovich. He's easily the best performance in Red, playing a paranoid survivalist who has learned to be paranoid, it does keep the group alive or most of them in this film.
Willis has perfected a nice dead pan comic style in his performance. Although I really can't see what Mary Louise Parker, the young woman working at Social Security who gets involved with Willis and then enmeshed in their counter ops operation.
What's this all about, let's just say that it's coming from the highest or nearly the highest level possible. Someone doesn't want a lot of people around to tell tales. And at the end of the film I'd love to know how the government covers up what happens in the climax.
93 year old Ernest Borgnine is trying to surpass John Gielgud's record of still acting when he was 97 has a small, but important role as the record keeper in the underground vault of the Central Intelligence Agency. Talk about knowing where all the bodies are buried. Ernie looks remarkable for his age and this is not his last project.
Try to catch Red, it's stylish paranoia to be sure.