Red (Special Edition)

Just a great, fun movie! The casting was perfect. There's enough action / stuff blowing up to keep your teenaged Son interested, and the interplay of characters will keep you daughter and wife entertained and laughing as well. If you've never seen Helen Mirren or John Malcovich in a comedy, you're missing out. Get the family together, put the cell phones on the charger with the privacy switch on, grab some popcorn and enjoy the time you've been missing together when everyone is usually going their own direction after dinner. You'll all be glad you did.

What a fun movie, highly recommend if you like corny, funny action movie.

Love love this movie. Great Sunday evening flick.

I love action flicks. What's even better about "Red" as an action flick is its cast. And this is not just any cast, but one filled only with retirement age actors (well, maybe Bruce Willis isn't quite there, but he acts as if he is). OK, maybe Mary Louise Parker isn't quite there either, but she's also excellent as Willis's love interest. So, what's to like about an action flick starring old actors? (When one is the same age as the actors, one is allowed to call them old.) 1. Humor in an action flick? Yeah, it's been done for years--Clint Eastwood and Schwarzenegger with their punchy one-liners. This time Morgan Freeman gets the line: "We're getting the band back together." It was funny in the television promos--it's even funnier in context. Ms Parker expresses her extreme displeasure with the Willis characther--with her mouth duct-taped! While the viewer may not know the exact words behind her anger, her meaning is quite clear. It's an excellent delivery complete with facial expressions and perfect comedic timing. 2. Romance. Willis and Parker? Yes, and the actors make it work even though he is retired R-E-D (retired, extremely dangerous) and she is a seemingly mild-mannered, cubicle-retirement clerk. However, in their conversations together he learns the way to divine her heart. He reads all the romance novels she reads. She also has a true hankering to travel to exotic places. When she tells him she wants to go to Chile, he says he's been there. The thing with his travels is the reason and the time, often by cover of night and to relieve someone of his ugly, hateful life. He's been to Chile, but hasn't experienced Chile. 3. Larger than life characters. Freeman has participated in Vietnam and Afghanistan and now is 80 years old (is Freeman really that old?) and living in a nice retirement home with his dose of excitement gained from eyeballing a beautiful, young aid's gluts. He also has stage four liver cancer. Helen Mirren as the lovely, refined mistress of a country estate, filling her hours with baking and flower arranging--and the occasional hit. As she tells Ms Parker: "I kill people." Karl Urban plays the adversary--a deep CIA special ops hit man. His job is to eliminate Willis's character. The reasons are eventually revealed and they are a doozy. John Malkovich plays an over-the-top paranoid, well, an Oliver Stone type. But Malkovich is hilarious, especially showing his pleasure at Willis's storage facility filled with weapons and munitions of extreme measures. 3. An expose of the great and secret powers of the CIA. Ernest Borgnine's character and his job and its location and purpose are prime examples. But there's more. 4. Weapons galore! Fun with weapons! An example: one soldier shoots a grenade at Malkovich who uses his weapon to bat it back to the soldier who then is blown up. A fierce, red-headed, female agent calls Malkovich Grandpa. He must show her what "grandpas" can do. She shoots a small missile at him--he shoots a bullet from a handgun directly into the center of that missile, causing blow back of the explosion and getting rid of that potty mouth agent (older people don't like being reminded of their age!) 5. A serious message amid all the shenanigans: the abuse of power in whatever place for whatever reason. Richard Dreyfus plays--with great flair--a powerful villain and how his power has distorted whatever tenuous connection he may have with the human race. 6. Quirkiness (but I suppose part of the humor)--Mirren wears a lovely, long white evening gown to a presidential party bid. Later Malkovich gives her a pair of combat boots to wear for their role in taking down the powerfully corrupt. Just a little quirky! Malkovich's house is inside a car. Let me rephrase. One enters his dwelling through the trunk. That's all I'll say. 7. I could put Brian Cox in any category. As a retired Soviet spy who hasn't killed anyone in years, he is almost a scene stealer. What a fun, fun movie (despite the various forms of violence). There's only one kiss, no, make that two (Freeman gets one) and just a few I love you's, giving this action flick a touch of heart.

This movie caught our eye when it was in the theater. The list of actors is very impressive. These are actors who can each make a movie, and there are a lot of them. The idea of the movie, retired people coming back to work their jobs, is alluring to the baby boomers who are retiring in droves. And lots of guns and action is what movies are so very good at. Somehow, we never did end up seeing the movie in the theater, in part due to some lukewarm reviews. Well, those reviews were wrong. The movie starts with Bruce Willis talking on the phone about his Social Security check to a young woman at SS. All of a sudden he is facing assassins. And it goes on from there. He recruits his old co-workers to help him. In the process of dealing with high tech bad guys trying to kill him, a great time is had by all. There's lots of shooting the bad guys, but somehow, we don't think about that. This is not a transcendental film, just a great good time. There is lots of comedy and action. Get this DVD, play it on the biggest screen you have, and bring on the popcorn.

I know movies can be considered an art form, a way to make a social/political statement, and/or a means of experimenting with style and content. But let's face it -- many of us go to the movies not to be educated or culturally refined, but to be entertained. I know I've enjoyed my share of brainless but fun blockbusters, such as the "Transformers" film series and the "A-Team" movie, and will gladly choose a Pixar or Disney movie over a more "arty" foreign film. There are wonderful, art-worthy Oscar contenders that I will probably never watch again, simply because though I acknowledge they are good, they just weren't fun, while less artistically impressive movies will become a hit with me because of how much I enjoyed myself watching them. "RED" is not an Oscar contender, and has absolutely no pretense of making a statement or considering itself high art. But it's a blast nonetheless. (For the record -- no, I have not read the comic series this is based on, so I'm judging the film solely on its own merits.) Frank Moses is a "RED" (Retired, Extremely Dangerous) CIA agent, trying to grow accustomed to a quiet civilian life and having slightly flirty phone conversations with Sarah, the customer service agent at his pension office. His attempts to relax and enjoy retirement are shattered when a hit squad attacks his house one night, sending him on the run. With a rather reluctant Sarah in tow, he makes a cross-country trip to round up his old CIA buddies -- Joe, terminally ill but still kicking; Marvin, paranoid and deliciously crazy; Victoria, an elegant and soft-spoken "wetwork" agent; and ex-Russian secret agent Ivan. As they put together the pieces and discover their team is being hunted down due to their connection with a military disaster in Guatemala, Frank is being pursued by young CIA agent and family man William Cooper, who follows orders with chilling precision but is seemingly unaware that he's being used as a tool by higher forces... By far the best part of this film is the cast, containing such heavy hitters as Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, and Richard Dreyfuss. All of them look like they're having an absolute blast making this movie, and sling hot lead and sharp one-liners with equal zest. John Malkovich chews quite a bit of scenery as Marvin, easily making him one of the funniest characters in the film, and Helen Mirren shines as Victoria, obviously having fun being a proper lady with a machine gun. Richard Dreyfuss has only a few scenes as a smirky weapons dealer, but he hams it up enough that he's quite memorable. Morgan Freeman plays against type as Joe and has relatively few scenes for being one of the top-credited names, and Bruce Willis seems to be running mostly on autopilot as Frank Moses, but they're still both fun to watch and have some good lines. Mary-Louis Parker is sweet and spunky as Sarah, and Karl Urban (probably best known for "Star Trek") is mostly playing straight man to the rest of the crew as Cooper, but does his job well enough that I can see him carrying a "Bourne" style action series on his own. The film operates solely on "Rule of Cool," eschewing realism for over-the-top explosions and loads of gunfire and fist-swinging action. I don't particularly mind this, as I was enjoying the ride too much to nitpick at any errors. This film knows what it is, and never has any pretense at art or high-minded storytelling. The downside is that the plot tends to fall by the wayside in favor of fight and shoot-out scenes, but there's a good deal of humor, character development, and even a sweet romance to make up for any deficiencies in the plot. Very fun and entertaining action flick, with good actors and memorable jokes and scenes carrying the movie quite well despite the fairly weak plot. If you want a fun action flick, "RED" is a good choice, with something for just about everybody. It's not going to win any awards, but it's sure going to entertain you. P.S. There's talk of a sequel... and reportedly when Helen Mirren was asked what it would take to get her into the sequel, she said "just send me a script." I can only hope something good comes of this... :D

Well, THAT was the most fun I've had in a movie in a long, long time! This thing is intricately plotted, perfectly photographed, and extremely well cast! Although there was little or no profanity and no sweaty bodies, we did see a lot of gunfire, car chases and blowie uppie stuff. The audience ate it up! First, let's talk about that cast: * Bruce Willis ("Cop Out") is a former CIA black-ops agent, now he's Retired, Extremely Dangerous...get it? He's trying to deal with boredom and inertia, and has taken to calling a particular gal in a call center about a check he keeps insisting never arrived. * Mary-Louise Parker ("Weeds") is that gal (see above). She reads bodice-rippers like Love's Savage Fury and dreams of having a manly man come into her life and sweep her away to excitement, passion and exotic locales. She is hilarious! * Morgan Freeman ("Invictus") is another retired agent, now relegated to a nursing home where he is dealing with a terminal illness. He too, is bored and lonely; this is NOT the way he expected his life to end. * John Malkovich ("Secretariat") is also part of this bunch. He spent a few years being injected with LSD, so his hold on reality is a bit shaky, but he LOVES guns, ammo and explosives! Talk about a loose cannon! * Helen Mirren ("The Last Station") isn't quite as retired as her buddies; she admits she still "takes a side job or two." She can wield a machine gun with the best of them and still packs a yen for an agent she had to shoot. * Ernest Borgnine ("SpongeBob SquarePants") should have retired years ago, but he's still working in the CIA's top-top-secret archives. * Richard Dreyfuss ("My Life in Ruins") is an industrialist who knows WHY a mysterious list was made of people who MUST die. * Karl Urban ("Star Trek") is absolutely perfect as a new-generation black-ops agent, every bit as well trained and deadly as his predecessors. I'm always impressed by him. This terrific film was beautifully directed by Robert Schwentke ("The Time Travelers's Wife") and I could hardly wait to get my DVD from Amazon.com. When every scene is deliciously shot, with guts, glamor and LOTS of giggles, we naturally look to the director. Let's keep an eye out for this guy, okay?

Hilarious movie, Bruce Willis knocks it out of the park again with his sardonic stoicism- accompanied by a cast of Titan actors, RED is the movie to bring home