First Hit: A silly fun film which showed off the quirkiness of some great actors.
I like films like RED which are a farce but reasonably put together enough to make it fun. I like when the implausible is made plausible enough so that I can sit back and just go for the ride. RED is one such film.
Is any of it plausible? No, but that isn’t the point. The point is to create enough of a plot with some writing which fit the actors range, yet move them enough outside their norm to make it enjoyable.
Frank Moses (played by Bruce Willis) is a retired CIA spook who, years ago, happened to be on a mission in Guatemala where the current Vice President got himself skewed by giving favors to a corporate executive named Alexander Dunning (played by Richard Dreyfuss).
The story begins to leak and a reporter is killed as are others who were on the mission. Moses was on the mission and is now being hunted. He innocently gets hooked up with a Social Security Claims associate named Sarah Ross (played by Mary-Louise Parker) because he likes the sound of her voice over the phone but meeting Moses means she is hunted as well.
To get out of this mess Moses finds others who were on the same mission in Guatemala to warm them that a CIA operative is out to kill them because they know the Vice President’s past. There is Joe Matheson (played by Morgan Freeman) who is dying of cancer, has nothing else to live for and thinks stopping these useless deaths is important.
Then there is Marvin Boggs (played by John Malkovich) who is paranoid, thinks the government is always after him and may mistakenly think a particular person is out to kill him but is often times right. These people are joined by Victoria (played by Helen Mirren) who is steely eyed and ready to kill someone at the drop of a hat (just to keep her finger in the pie).
All these older CIA covert operations people (RED Retired Extremely Dangerous) are out to expose the truth because if they don’t the current CIA will kill them.
Willis is great with his typical sarcastic wit conjuring up a way to resolve the crisis he finds himself. Dreyfuss is fine as the man behind the scenes with money and the stings which are pulling on the VP and soon to be President. Parker is a perfect fit as the girl living in Kansas City who’s never seen or done anything in her life as she gets pulled into the espionage mess and enjoys the change of life. Freeman is perfect as the sound thinker and always ready to do the right thing for the team even if it means pulling a trigger or being on the other end of the bullet. Malkovich is perfect as the right on the edge guy who spent many of his early years in the Army’s LSD program. Mirren was funny in her out of character role firing machine guns and wasting other’s lives. For fun Ernest Borgnine the CIA deep dark records keeper is a joy to see again. Jon and Eric Hoeber wrote this in a funny tongue-in-cheek sort of way while Robert Schwentke made the best of his actors and a tight script that moved things along in a silly funny sort of way.
Overall: It was a romp, easy to watch, predictable and engaging.