Red

Red. Another graphic novel turned movie. Or at least loosely based on the graphic novel. I have never read it, but I knew there was major nerdrage when it came out, comparing to the source (“They are nothing alike!! rawrrawrrage!” – Nerd). But eh, whatever. Loosely is fine. Wouldn’t want the story I just read to be identical to what is on screen. Consider it another chapter, and we are good to go.

Fun fact! This is the first “DC” movie to not be made via Warner Brros in anyway.

However, it definitely keeps its “comic” feel to it.

Red seems to stand for “Retired: Extremely Dangerous”, or at least it does in the movie. It is a classification given to a CIA/whatever operative after they are done, if they are supposed to be disposed of. A situation which Bruce Willis finds himself in. He just wanted to enjoy life, and chat with case worker assigned to him on the phone, Mary-Louise Parker. BUT ASSASSINS! Bruce realizes their formation makes them USA trained, so he has to figure out whats going on.

He tries to get his team back together, exceptionally crazy John Malkovich, more calm yet sexual Morgan Freeman, and deadly with a gun Helen Mirren. I came up with those descriptions myself, you’re welcome.

But that is not all the old people involved. Richard Dreyfuss is some sort of bad guy, I guess. And Karl Urban is a young gun at the CIA in charge of bring Bruce and his friends down.

Mary-Louise Parker just gets to run around, being bait, confused, and pretty.

The driving point for this movie is obviously an “older” group of people kicking ass, instead of some young muscled dude. We get to accept that all these people have been in their fair share of spy missions, so they are all clever and hopefully good at kicking ass. Which they are. The action scenes are very interesting. Some of which is just people shooting at each other (read: normal action movie action) but they raise the bar a lot.

John Malkovich is also fucking crazy.

Don’t worry, he shares some crazy with Morgan Freeman.

Almost every scene with Malkovich you will find yourself laughing or, you know, yelling “holy shit!” at something cool they had him do. The “roof scene” early on with him is one of my favorites in terms of action.

This movie thankfully picked up the slack from the rest of the movies I have seen this week. Even if it is nothing like the comic.