Cinema Snark: Red

I saw movies last weekend! Shocking, I know. My attendance at the movies has dropped considerably now that I actually have to pay for tickets, but I felt that Red and Let Me In warranted my attention. So, here's the first review.

Red

Okay, I've been drooling over this since I saw the trailer way back in June or July or whatever. It ran before Twilight: Eclipse, which struck me as an odd marketing decision - until I considered the possibility that they were comforting the menfolk in the audience who were only there because their womenfolk had threatened not to put out if they didn't get to go see Twilight as a couple. In that sense, you could say that the Red trailer was a testosterone shot to ward off the bitch flu. Either that, or the trailer was there because both movies are made by Summit Entertainment. (I like my first theory better.)

But basically, all you need to know about the movie is this: there are a bunch of old people, and they're complete fucking badasses. Bruce Willis plays the exact same character that he always does, and it somehow hasn't stopped being entertaining (a phenomenon known as the "Samuel L. Jackson Effect") - but this time, he's brought friends! John Malkovich is the resident batshit crazy one, Morgan Freeman is the resident cheerful black one, aaand then there's Helen Mirren. She arranges flowers and makes tea and kills shit dead with a variety of high-powered weapons. Not bad for the Queen of England. (In other Helen Mirren-related news, she's going to be Prospera in Julie Taymor's upcoming movie adaptation of The Tempest. I'm freaking out.) Rounding out the cast are Karl Urban, who gets lots of points for Lord of the Rings but loses so, so many for Doom and Pathfinder, Brian Cox, who was inexplicably absent from the entire marketing campaign despite having a bigger role than Morgan Freeman, and Mary Louise Parker, who is pretty entertaining despite spending so much of the movie with duct tape over her mouth.

Long story short, it's just fantastic to see "respectable" Oscar-winning actors letting their hair down (what little they have left, in several cases) and having a good time. Is Red a cinematic masterpiece? Christ, no - but it doesn't want to be. It exists pretty much solely for the purpose of letting audiences watch otherwise dignified AARP members beat the shit out of everyone who gets in their way. One-liners and impossible stunts abound, and it's basically a great 90's-style action-comedy in every way.

Unfortunately, that's also the movie's main weakness. It's an action-comedy, meaning that it's not particularly ground-breaking in in any way. The plot is simultaneously simplistic (little to no character development) and convoluted (government conspiracy, blah blah blah). It's not mind-screwy enough to gain a rabid fanbase, and the budget isn't big enough to make it a real blockbuster. The cast and the action sequences make the movie fun, but it never really goes above and beyond.

There's a scene midway through the movie which is very reminiscent of The Dark Knight Returns: Bruce Willis hears that Karl Urban "looks pretty tough," so he goes out of his way to find him and engage in brutal hand-to-hand combat. It's a pride thing: an aging man trying to prove that he's still the badass alpha male. They fight and there's blood and glass and shit getting broken, and then Bruce dislocates Karl's arm and gets away. In DKR, on the other hand, Batman does the same thing with the leader of the mutants - only to get summarily curbstomped. He barely escapes with his life, but he learns a lesson: he shouldn't try to fight like a young man anymore; he needs to fight smarter and use the benefit of his years of experience. That scene (and Batman's victory in the eventual rematch) made the story more interesting, because it added a layer of vulnerability to the protagonist - something that is sorely lacking in Red.

Red discusses the problems of retirement and aging, but more in terms of boredom than anything else. They're still just as good at shooting people as they ever were, if not better. Government assassins are apparently like fine wine, or possibly some kind of cheese - i.e., they only get better with age. The protagonists generally shrug off bullet wounds and make comments about how the Secret Service "used to be tougher." Sure, it's entertaining, but there's also no real sense of tension or drama. The song "Back in the Saddle Again" is featured prominently in the trailer and the fight scene discussed above, and it pretty much sums up the tone of the movie - they used to kill people, then they didn't for a while, but now they do again and it's never been easier.

Bottom line: Red is entertaining as hell, but it's not exactly a movie for the ages. In fact, it would be pretty damn forgettable if not for the wonderful casting. But hey, it still beats the hell out of The Expendables.