The Case for Seeing Red

No, this is not the Red from the wonderful Three Colours Trilogy (that would be Rouge).

This RED refers to a bunch of older actors who are (not quite) Retired but Extremely Dangerous, with the glorious Mary-Louise Parker (worship her quirkiness) and the wrinkled (i.e., “serious”) forehead of Karl Urban along for the ride.

The people in the front seat of this vehicle are Bruce Willis (on “quiet strength” mode), Morgan Freeman (playing dependent), John Makovich (loving his wildly unhinged role) and Helen Mirren (obviously relishing the chance to play a gun toting super assassin). The vehicle is of the comic book variety, meaning the story is all ridiculous and full of overblown caricatures of people, but that has never stopped a movie from being fun before, and it doesn’t act as much of an impediment here.

[Speaking of which, a sidebar note to the Val Morgan preshow programme people: there is currently an advertisement playing that shows a new telecommunications company driving around the country and bringing their knowledge, expertise and high speed internet to all New Zealanders. One of the technicians sagely nods to himself while driving, saying matter-of-factly that their network has no impedences. I am sure it does not, as there is no such thing (Dictionary.com can’t find a definition), which is a huge relief to those who would use the network, but an impediment for those who want to take the advertisement seriously]

The star wattage of the cast (plus my soft spot for Mary-Louise Parker) meant that I was totally won over by what was happening on screen, but even I felt the running time tick by. Willis was in his preferred element of smug, wise cracking tough guy, but his machismo was not able to overwhelm the performances of those around him, with the resulting quite balanced effect. Urban got to do a lot more than I thought he would, though character development for anyone took second fiddle to the amount of time and energy spent on guns firing and things exploding.

It was also quite interesting to note that the various attempts at humour struck different parts of the Readings audiences at different times, one joke resonating more with those irritating people texting through most of the movie to my right, while those in front to my left found one joke uproariously amusing while the rest of the theatre watched in stony silence.

Afterwards, I can say I enjoyed it, but not to the same extent of, say, the A Team. But then, with the whole “retired assassins” part of the story, it stood to reason that Red would have a more relaxed and dignified atmosphere about it – well, as dignified and relaxed as a brainless action movie can be, at any rate.

Verdict: The cast shows what good thesping can bring to what is otherwise a very run of the mill and pretty predictable kind of action movie. And looking into Mary-Lousie Parker’s big doe eyes is bound to make anything seem painless. Red scores 65 retirement age years out of 100.