Red

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 06:00:16 +0100

Bruce Willis' favorite color?

In a year of never-ending 3-D and cliched action movies, "Red" manages to avoid being those things.There are some effects that look like they could've been in 3-D, but let's be glad it isn't."Red" is an action-comedy that delivers the kinda dumb-in-an-entertaining-way action you could expect and comedy that is actually pretty funny.Not laugh-out-loud funny, but funny enough.Bruce Willis makes a surprisingly good comeback from his poorly reviewed "Cop Out" and he actually knows how to be an entertaining action hero and be funny at the same time.Add in Morgan Freeman and Richard Dreyfuss and you get an action-comedy that really does know about the genres it's mixing together in order to excite and make laughs at the same time.

Frank (Bruce Willis), Joe (Morgan Freeman), Marvin (John Malkovich) and Victoria (Helen Mirren) used to be the CIAs top agents but the secrets they know just made them the Agency's top targets. Now framed for assassination, they must use all of their collective cunning, experience and teamwork to stay one step ahead of their deadly pursuers and stay alive. To stop the operation, the team embarks on an impossible, cross-country mission to break into the top-secret CIA headquarters, where they will uncover one of the biggest conspiracies and cover-ups in government history.

The plot really keeps you interested and the performances are just great.John Malkovich's character is made in the trailer to look like an ex-CIA agent who's gone mad.While not as crazy as you might expect, Malkovich does manage to be funny.He really should consider starring in more movies like this.Now I've seen some movies that feature old ladies using guns but this was just looney, and I mean that in a good way.Helen Mirren looks to be about 70 years old but manages to use sniper rifles and .50 caliber machine guns like there's no tomorrow.Who cares if we've seen it done before in millions of other movies? It's still fun to watch.While "Red" is not a great action movie, comedy, or action comedy, the performance by Willis and the story manage to keep the movie afloat while we sit in our seats and laugh at the witty carnage and clever one-liners.Ever seen a bullet and an RPG colliding and causing an explosion that engulfs the person who fired the rocket? Now is your chance.

Grade: B