Would Be Rememorable but . . .

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2011)

Walking into Red, I had high hopes. I was excited to see a movie with an older cast full of some of my—and also my parents'—favorites. Bruce Willis is Frank Moses, a retired CIA agent who is trying to uncover a very high-tech and somewhat unoriginal government conspiracy theory. He hunts down his old pals that he fought with in his "glory days." The crew includes old chipper Morgan Freeman as Joe, paranoid John Malkovich as Boggs, and the glamorous "goddess," Helen Mirren. Some of the higher points of the film were Bruce and Karl Urban's bloody fistfight in the middle of the CIA headquarters, Helen Mirren's gun-obsessed character, Victoria, and Malkovich's crazy persona, which fits perfectly into a stereotypical retired government secret agent. One of the downers was the unnecessary character of Mary Louise-Parker. Really? Why did these filmmakers stick a skanky (sorry for the language, Ms. Platter), young damsel-in-distress in the midst of an intense action flick? She seemed out of place, especially since she is young enough to be Bruce Willis' daughter. The make-out scene at the end was way too much to handle. This detail proved to be one of the deciding factors of the film, which disappointed me even more. The plot revolved around the track down of the people on the VP's hit list, and less about the development of the plan to take out the vice president himself. It was no 24, but I still expected Jack Bauer to pop out of one of those shiny black Escalades any minute, carrying a grenade launcher. I guess Bauer wasn't old enough to land a part in this movie. Overall I'll give this film a solid 6.5/10 for the excellent acting, but brought down by unnecessary characters and a clipped screenplay.