Proving that not every adaptation of a DC comic has to be dripping with spandex and capes; 2010 saw Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer’s limited series, Red, reach cinema screens without a single cowl or superpower in sight.
For those of you unfamiliar with the comic book – which admittedly would most probably be the majority of us – Red stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous” and was the latest flick that saw a cast of recognizable and seasoned faces growing old disgracefully by appearing in an outrageous action movie. However, while fellow “geri-actioner”, The Expendables would pack its cast with grizzled ex-veterans of a genre reeking of cordite and smoke, Red instead saw Bruce Willis’ retired CIA agent surrounded by a string of thespians all eager to let their hair down (no offence, Bruce) as they headed into the autumnal stages of their careers. But, if the likes of Helen Mirren and John Malkovich could have a fit of fun waving firearms around, why couldn’t we?
Frank Moses is a retired CIA black ops agent who now spends his days rigidly trying to fill the empty hours by staying active and having pleasant chats with kooky pension call centre employee, Sarah Ross. However, when his bland, daily routine is interrupted by a visit from an assassination squad (whom Frank promptly outmanuvers and kills), he goes on the run and races to Sarah’s house to protect her as she’s literally the only human being that Frank is in contact with.
Abducting her with thee most apologetic kidnapping ever seen, Frank has to try and figure out why he’s been targeted for termination while keeping one step ahead of young, CIA buck, agent William Cooper, who has been tasked to take him down. In order to do that means that Frank has to visit an arry of aging former associates such as mentor Joe, the utterly paranoid Marvin and sultry assassin Victoria and enlist them to come out of their civilian lives in order to unravel the conspiracy.
However, in amidst the hails of bullets, various explosions and countless agents deployed to kill them, Sarah finds that not only is she having an utter ball, but the connection she once had with Frank over the phone seems to be blossoming into a very real relationship.
As this group of lethal retirees find that this conspiracy goes from a long forgotten mission back in Guatemala in 1981 to all the way to the top, matters are complicated even further when Sarah is captured by Cooper who has dedicated himself to ending this whole thing one way or another. But the spy game has notoriously twisty rules and nothing is what it seems – especially a bunch of weathered former agents old enough to collect a free bus pass.
Shot with the kind of sassy flair that makes this kind of enjoyable hoakum sing, Red may be the perfect example of the starry action comedy that entertains greatly while you’re watching it, only for it to entirely evaporate from your memory the second it draws to a close. There’s nothing wrong with this of course – film is supposed to entertain on the surface just as much as it moves the soul – but it’s in terribly amusing to think that a movie that had this much star power virtually had no effect on the cultural landscape despite featuring the sight of Helen Mirren unloading the full might of a Browning M2HB while wearing a white evening gown.
The main reason for this is that even though Red is legitimately fun, it’s probably the most glib action movie released during the entire decade as the film contains roughly about as much genuine peril than your average Roger Moore Bond movie as the impressive cast breeze through countless near-death scenarios with barely a hair out of place. At this point in his career, not having a hair out of place (or having any hair at all at for that matter) was becoming something of a predictable scenario of the action movie output of Bruce Willis as even the latest Die Hard installments were suffering horribly from being colourless, bland affairs.
However, Red pivots by making the minimalist, bulletproof persona Willis insisted on portraying back then the whole point of his introverted character, as the former killing machine awkwardly connects with his inner romantic with Mary Louise-Parker’s bizarrely unflappable phone jockey. The entire movie is played for laughs as the cast stride through the movie like living blobs of teflon as any and all examples of realism slide right off them in a way that makes the absurdly cool Ocean’s Eleven gang look like the Beverly Hillbillies.
It’s ironic that the movie would put such an obvious, comic book sheen onto Warren Ellis’ three partner when the original story played its story out way more seriously, but while Willis goes through the action motions like he’s a blank-faced, immortal, the test of the cast make up for it in various ways. Louise-Parker’s Sarah may be middle-aged wish fulfilment made flesh (she treats getting bound and gagged and driven halfway across the country as a minor annoyance at best), but her wide-eyed attitude to exaggerated spy shit is legitimately sweet. Franchise collecting Karl Urban may be saddled with a basic, stern agent role, but he gets to have a fun, no-holds-barred, office brawl with Willis and the likes of Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss and Morgan Freeman get to have fun with roles broader than Cox’s Russian accent, but the real MVP awards go to Malkovich and Mirren. The former get to send the ham-o-meter flying off the charts as the constantly deranged Marvin who, it turns out, was being fed LSD by his handlers for years and thus has him acting like a more extreme GTA side character to hugely entertaining effect. However acting as the silky ying to his ranting yang is Victoria a deadly English rose whose demure nature belies the fact that she’s killed more men than testicular cancer and watching the actress get stuck in firing machine guns and sniper rifles that are almost as big as her may in fact be the movie’s signature image.
However, the movie tries maybe too hard to be glossy, throwawy fun and as a result, director Robert Schwentke’s efforts make it hard to draw up any real drama even when one of the seemingly unkillable good guys actually takes a bullet – and if you don’t believe these guys are in danger it’s tough not to treat it as nothing more than very disposable fun.
Still, the action’s fairly cool – Willis calmly stepping out of a careening police car like a fucking cartoon character is a cool image, as is Malkovich deftly swatting a grenade back to its owner – the jokes are fairly decent and its general, overall pleasantness of the thing means that despite being utterly forgettable, Red falls nicely into the black.
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