RED Review

RETIRED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS that is the meaning behind the title of the movie RED an action-adventure thriller starring Bruce Willis which does plenty to live up to the title. This adventure follows Frank Moses, a retired black-ops agent played with great skill by Bruce Willis who lives a peaceful albeit boring lifestyle who has started up a long-distance romance with an insurance check girl in Kansas City named Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) who is paid an unexpected visit by high-tech assassins who want his blood. After tearing the team to shreds Moses sets out to save the girl of his affections from the forces of his enemy and reassemble his old allies to aid him in his mission of survival and to unravel the mysterious circumstances he has found himself in. Moses learns that his pursuers are responsible for the death of a New York Times reporter and that they are systematically killing off a certain group of individuals for a mysterious reason which he with the help of his team works to discover and prevent the impending result at all costs. 

    The past is alive and well and the corruption of today only delivers the inevitable consequences is a strong resonant theme in this picture. Moses and his team are a group of retirees sporting an eclectic cast including Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren amongst others. The team may be old and forgotten but they certainly aren’t out of date when it comes to their skill sets. Moses is still as harsh and physically dominant as ever in the spy game and Helen Mirren’s character Victoria is a vicious and unrelenting sniper with a willpower to her that isn’t to be denied. John Malkovich's character Marvin is a person a bit on the insane side as in the past he underwent daily doses of LSD for a number of years in what he thought was a specialized experiment. Morgan Freeman’s character Joe brings the charm and suaveness that is desired in a spy as the action takes off and offers up twists and turns along the way. Sarah is wide-eyed and curious in the matters of the dangerous world that this team of old-timers operate in. She finds the world exciting and engaging and even though her initial resistance to Moses was definitive she ends up being wooed to his charms and good heart. The director does a good job of capturing the spirit of an environment filled with characters that the audience can actually care about and does what a filmmaker who really understands the medium well does: create conflict. 

The conflict comes in the shape of danger from the pursuing enemies and the lead man assigned to do the enemy’s dirty work which is none other than fair-haired pretty boy William Cooper a CIA agent with a toughness to him that gives him grit. Cooper is a perfect contrast to Moses and his allies as he is the youth of this age in the world of espionage and furthermore unlike Moses, he has people he has cared about for a long time, his family. Karl Urban’s performance of Cooper brings energy and excitement to the screen and charisma and personality that plays off well against Moses. Moses and his team face a host of threats and they, in turn, take aggressive actions against them to get to the bottom of matters and settle the score the way they know best. The director in excellent style builds tension as the story progresses and poses complications to the characters audiences follow. These ensuing complications deliver the element of corruption that becomes so true to the characters. 

With hostile enemies bearing down on the heroes the forces of corruption are at play. Facts come to light that shed a particularly disturbing revelation about society within the government and how the characters deal with this is executed well in my opinion. The development of the characters is natural and subplots pair well along with each other so that when the antagonistic forces threaten the characters dramatic tension is created and the plot barrels on forward with a desperate need to reach the finish line before it is too late. There are certainly aspects of this picture that aren’t perfect, such as a slow beginning or some aspects of the execution of the romance story but overall it is a fantastic picture with an exciting nature. RED is definitely a movie worth investing time into watching and offers a good commentary on the age of the past and what that means for today and the future.