A rip roarin' good time

Rating: 8/10 (29 November 2010)

A team of Ex- Intelligence operatives come out of retirement when they're lazy days are disturbed by pesky assassins. Led by Frank (Bruce Willis) the team marked RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous) reorganizes to embark on one last mission.
It's interesting that all of the stars have at one point played an assassin in their acting career; Helen Mirren – Shadow Boxer, Bruce Willis – The Jackal, Morgan Freeman – Wanted and The Contract, John Malkovich – In the Line of Fire. Upon seeing the trailer I got a chuckle because those where the characters that came to mind. Granted those bad guys didn't ride off into to the sunset to live a happy retirement. But this is a cool premise to show that even though a person may not be 25 years old they can still be formidable adversaries.
All are now retired trying to live peaceful, relatively normal lives. But sometimes the past just doesn't go away. Frank must find out who is killing former operatives and why. With the help of Joe (Morgan Freeman) they follow the trail that leads them to smarmy arms dealer Alexander Dunning (Richard Dreyfuss). Wow, when was the last time Richard Dreyfuss was in a movie? With Hollywood being so youth driven, it's nice to see some older folks taking center stage. It's not every day that you see the over 50 crowd shooting guns and blowing up stuff. This movie was so fun. The quirky characters are a scream. Seeing Helen Mirren, the queen for goodness sake, shooting a gun so gigantic that it may as well have been a cannon was worth the ticket price alone.
John Malkovich's paranoia keeps the audience chuckling with his crazy eyes and mannerisms. His scene at the ship yards highlights that he is still a bad ass. Mary Louise-Parker does a wonderful job as the wide-eyed ditzy love interest of Frank, Sara. Frank has been pretending not to receive his pension checks in order to talk with Sara, the customer service representative, on the phone. With his phone is probably bugged the bad guys know he likes her. So Frank "kidnaps" Sara for her own safety. Somehow these two seem a perfect fit; the customer service agent and retired spy/assassin. Yep, sounds right to me, haha.
In true action movie fashion we see that Bruce, the youngest of the team, has still got it in a scene when he goes one on one with Karl Urban. There's nothing like a little hand to hand combat. There is plenty of shattered glass, punches you can feel in the audience and broken bones.
The storyline was a little weak but it was enough to keep things moving. The idea is that the Vice President has ordered exterminations due to their involvement in an operation many years ago. Yeah whatever, the ultimate draw is watching these guys kill. In a nutshell, go see Red, enjoyable characters and premise. It's worth the dough.
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