Think "Space Cowboys" for the CIA

Rating: 7/10 (18 October 2010)

The conceit of this movie is that a group of retired ex-agents for the CIA can out-gun,out fight, and out-everything current employees, all without mussing Helen Mirren's coiffure. Think "Space Cowboys" for the CIA.
Overall, the movie works. The script by Jon and Eric Hoeber is excellent. Someone required that Bruce Willis's (age 55) love interest be a younger woman, so they cast Mary-Louise Parker (age 46), which is not as bad a stretch as I expected from Hollywood. "RED" also stars Helen Mirren (65), Morgan Freeman (73), John Malkovich (57), Richard Dreyfuss (63), and Brian Cox (64), with a cameo by Ernest Borgnine (93). Karl Urban (28) played the poor current agent opposing all that goodness.
This is definitely an action film for the Ensure set, but the action probably will work for all ages. It's way over the top. People are blown up non-gorily in towering infernos of flame and smoke. Our heroes never kill any good guys, although they will stoop to knocking them silly. Willis does his patented smirk, and Malkovich pretty much steals every scene he's in with a loony-tunes character that many actors would die for, but few could do.
The gist of the plot is that a number of retired agents have been marked for termination with extreme prejudice, and Willis, Freeman, and Malkovich are on the list. Willis finds out the connection was an extraction in Guatemala, and he puts together the team of retirees (marked R.E.D. by the CIA - Retired, Extremely Dangerous). Parker gets pulled in because she knows Willis and happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The aging -- no, make that aged -- former agents kill the bad guys, blow things up, and generally have a whooping good time talking about the old days and how much tougher things were in their youth. I was worried about Mirren being able to pull it off as a killer with automatic weapons, but she handled it with graceful aplomb.
The violence is so over the top it's cartoonish (think "Home Alone" violence cranked up more decibels than you care to hear), and when our heroes are shot, it's touch and go for as long as the script needs to tug our heartstrings, then the next scene they're fully recovered and in another fight. Nothing is to be taken seriously, and the script is fast-paced and witty. Not a great movie, but a very good one.