RED
2 1/2 stars (out of 4)
Rated: 14A
“This used to be a gentleman’s game,” Morgan Freeman grouses to Bruce Willis in RED, speaking as one frustrated former CIA spook to another.
The point may be moot in this ensemble comedy of rat-tat-tat retirees, who aren’t going gently into that good night. It does raise the question: When exactly was that golden era of saintly spies?
Certainly not in the past year, where the titular scruffs of The Expendables and The Losers have busted heads and expended lead without regard to any rules of engagement. You might have to go as far back 75 years to Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, where gentleman antagonists Robert Donat and Sir Godfrey Tearle discussed luncheon details at the point of a gun.
RED, which refers to a supposed CIA acronym meaning “retired and extremely dangerous,” has few pretensions beyond showcasing some skilled mature actors at their deadpan best.
Director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) and screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber have significantly lightened up on the graphic novel origins of RED, making it more of a romantic satire of late-life adventure than a thriller of bloody intrigue.
As such it’s likely to appeal more to fans of Freeman’s The Bucket List than to partisans of Willis’ Die Hard series. But with the likes of Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Brian Cox in the impressive cast, which also finds room for a 93-year-old Ernest Borgnine, just watching this gang having fun is reason enough to smile.
RED begins as a 6 a.m. wake-up call for Willis’ Frank Moses, a former CIA black-ops specialist, living in Cleveland, who hasn’t taken well to being put on the shelf. He’s trying to stick to a daily routine, which includes the awkward telephone courting of bemused pension clerk Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), whom he may eventually get around to asking out.
“Eventually” becomes “suddenly” when a squad of professional hitmen surround his house and Frank has to get on the good foot to do the bad thing again. Sarah becomes Frank’s unwilling travel partner, as the duo hurtle around the eastern U.S. (with Toronto and New Orleans supplying most of the scenery) dodging bullets as they try to figure out who has it in for Frank.
In standard road-trip fashion, the trip includes stops to reel in Frank’s former colleagues Joe (Freeman), Victoria (Mirren) and Marvin (Malkovich), each with their own areas of specialties and personal tics. But all of them are quite capable of pulling the trigger, when the occasion demands, even if they may pull a muscle while doing so.
They cross paths with Russian spy Ivan (Cox), who has a history with Victoria, and face down both a CIA pursuer (Karl Urban) and a corporate baddie (Richard Dreyfuss), who provide a reasonable facsimile of a plot.
How it all ends up is significantly less interesting than how they get there. It’s a hoot to watch the elegant Mirren shift from high heels to combat boots, as she gamely goes from arranging flowers to being locked and loaded.
RED may be shy of gentlemen, but it lives up to its acronym.
“I’m not dead,” says Freeman, as the bullets fly. “Just retired.”
Peter Howell is a syndicated movie critic for The Toronto Star.