- Robert Schwentke's Red was probably doomed to add up to considerably less than the sum of its parts. With parts played by Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Richard Dreyfuss, Brian Cox, and Ernest Borgnine, how could it have gone any other way? Nonetheless, I'm always disappointed when a film goes to the trouble of collecting such an extensive stable of skilled actors for no other compelling reason than for them to be in the same place at the same time. I'm reminded of the MLB All-Star game: plenty of talent playing one of the most inconsequential and unexciting games of the season.
- Unfortunately, the plot of Red amounts to little more than pretending as through these gracefully aging stars were once world-class secret government operatives. The story mostly focuses on Frank Moses (Willis), a former spook so lonely that he'll gladly tear up his pension checks for an excuse to talk on the phone with Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), the woman who issues them. For her part, Sarah is also intrigued by Frank, but her enthusiasm is understandably dampened when he sneaks inside her apartment one night and kidnaps her. The reason, naturally, is that Frank's former CIA employers have now targeted him and anyone they perceive as being close to him. In stories like this, the reasons are less important than the fact that a younger agent named Cooper (Karl Urban), possibly on loan from The Bourne Supremacy, commands legions of anonymous black-suited drones to throw at Moses whenever he gets the chance.
- In his quest to evade the CIA, Frank first approaches Joe (Freeman) in a nursing home, where the terminally ill retiree's constant struggles with television reception clearly merit assistance from shapely nurses. When Joe becomes unavailable, however, Frank resorts to contacting the conspiracy-minded survivalist Marvin (Malkovich), whose "daily doses of LSD for 11 years" may have adversely affected his sanity. Finally, the team collects Victoria (Mirren) and her former KGB lover (Cox), and the group interrogates a former black ops soldier (Dreyfuss) before crashing a party hosted by none other than the Vice President (Julian McMahon) of the United States. The film's irritating animated postcard cutscenes try to keep the audience apprised of where these events are taking place, but again, making sense is probably not one of the film's major goals.
- Strangely enough, though, not making sense is also not one of the film's major problems. In fact, when I was trying to think of my favorite roles that these actors appeared in, I came up with Die Hard for Willis, The Long Good Friday for Mirren, The Shawshank Redemption for Freeman, and Manhunter for Cox. Frankly, none of those movies makes terribly much sense, and they're all far better, more compelling films than this one. Die Hard, in particular, is perhaps the definitive over-the-top action comedy, and it makes no pretense about its own absurdity. I think the real problem with Red is instead that it has very little to offer besides a great cast. You can almost hear the writers speculating: "Maybe if John Malkovich hides a gun in a stuffed pig, it will be funny. Maybe if Helen Mirren shoots a machine gun, it will be funny." If the source graphic novel was this uncreative in its humor, then some of the blame belongs there. Regardless, the filmmakers either chose bad source material or botched the adaptation. The result is a film whose cast interviews must have been infinitely more interesting than the film itself.
- James Remar also had a bit part.
