Over the past year or so there seems to have been a weird trend going on in Hollywood comedies for plots that involve the hero kidnapping a woman (normally with the excuse of it being for her own good) and them falling in love along the way. Red is yet another example of this, in this case the hero being lonely, retired CIA Agent Bruce Willis, who after surviving a particularly excessive (and ridiculously incompetent) attempt on his life deduces (improbably, but accurately) that Mary-Louise Parker, the equally lonely call centre operative who handles his pension, is also in danger. In order to keep them safe, and to find out who was behind the hit, he must recruit the services of a bunch of his old spy buddies along the way – in short it’s like what would happen if New Tricks had been pitched to Hollywood execs rather than the BBC, complete with gags about ageing, dirty old men and a distrust of the young (which includes pretty much anyone under the age of 40).
Although based on a graphic novel by Transmetropolitan creator Warren Ellis, Red’s strong point definitely isn’t in its writing. In addition to the fairly well-worn territory the story covers, there are quite a few glaring plot holes. But then, nobody buys a ticket for a Bruce Willis movie based on its script. So it’s sad to say that he’s showing his age, he struggles to sell some of the big action set-pieces, and his charm is no-longer quite so effortless. Perhaps in order to distact the attention away from this, the filmmakers have managed to rope in a strong supporting cast, including John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox and Morgan Freeman. Out of these Mirren and Parker are particularly good – with each getting more of a chance to shine than women generally do in action movies, and a cameo from Ernest Borgnine is surprisingly entertaining, but Cox and Malkovich suffer from the one-note characters the script provides them with, with their initially amusing shticks getting more tiresome as the film goes on. Morgan Freeman once again just plays himself.
Despite the excellent cast (who could resist the thought of seeing Helen Mirren as a machine-gun wielding badass?) and an occasionally amusing script, Red is ultimately a disappointing experience as a result of the script’s laziness. When considered in relation to this year’s other comic adaptations, it isn’t even in the same league as The Losers (to which it shares a number of plot similarities), let alone Kick-Ass or Scott Pilgrim. And in terms of this year’s kidnapping based romances, it’s actually less satisfying than Knight and Day, as unbelievable as that may sound.
