Red has assembled a cast with a wide range of appeal. Bruce Willis can bring ’em in from “Moonlighting” to Die Hard, Morgan Freeman needs nothing more than Shawshank Redemption, John Malkovich is immortalized after facing off against Clint Eastwood and Helen Mirren can star in The Queen and just as easily come into this film wielding heavy artillery. Even Mary Louise-Parker has the highly successful hit “Weeds” on television right now and if that doesn’t work for you, turn back the clock to her time on “The West Wing.” As far as demographics go this film has it covered (except, perhaps, the younger female demographic). Take those names and boil them in a pot with the promise of over-the-top cartoony violence and it would seem you would have a recipe for success. And you would be right… almost.
Where Red runs into a problem is the the film’s contradiction with its source material. The graphic novel from which the film is based is extremely violent, but that’s not what’s important, it’s the edge the comic delivers that’s missing. The comic is a far more gritty telling of the story of retired Black-Ops C.I.A. agents declared Retired and Extremely Dangerous (R.E.D.) being hunted for what they know and what they’ve done. Not only did screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber (Whiteout) cut the bloody violence from the story, they turned it into a mildly comedic PG-13 romp that has a few laughs, but at nearly two hours long the not-too-funny-in-the-first-place jokes turn stale pretty fast.
Director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) doesn’t bring enough energy to the film, relying too heavily on the gags to do all the work. Malkovich carries most of the weight as a paranoid ex-C.I.A. operative that gets the majority of the one-liners, for which there’s no one better than Malkovich to deliver them. Willis, however, remains stone-faced through most of the feature and not even the trained killer inside of him is allowed to flourish to give the character any kind of screen presence. To dull things a bit more, Karl Urban, playing the man hunting down the group, is given the same persona. They may as well be robots facing off against one another for what it’s worth.
Mirren is simply there to be the 65-year-old woman that loves killing people, as she plays the aging snow bunny with a closet worth of fur jackets frequently used as sight gags. Finally, Freeman is simply there to slap around Richard Dreyfuss a bit. Not too bad, but far from worthy of recommendation.
However, don’t take this to assume I hated this movie. I sat through it twice in fact. My first screening was of an unfinished cut with unfinished effects and ADR. This is one of those films that you don’t mind watching just as much as you don’t seek it out. Had I not needed to review it I wouldn’t have seen it again, but it didn’t bother me having to do so.
Warner Bros., who has exclusive rights to the DC Comics properties when it comes to film and television adaptations, passed on the project several times and I can only assume it had to do with the lack of “umph!” the film delivers. WB has delivered PG-13 movies that manage to have family appeal while also bumping up against that restricted rating and that’s the territory this film needed to approach and sadly falls short. Red is a two-hour sitcom version of a geriatric A-Team and there isn’t enough material to sustain the duration.
